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SON OF ITALY 


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PASCAL D’ANGELO 


SON OF ITALY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




PASCAL D’ANGELO 

»t 

SON OF ITALY 


Nrm fork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1924 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



Copyright, 1924, 


By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. 
Published November, 1924 


FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 


NOV 19 1924 


This book is dedicated to Mr. Luigi Forgione 
whose aid and encouragement have made its 
appearance possible. 




The author is indebted to the following 
magazines and newspapers: Literary Review, 
The Liberator , The Bookman s The Measure , 
The Nation , and II Popolo and Bollettino 
Della Sera for permission to republish the 
poems found in this volume. 






INTRODUCTION 


Reading the delightful book in which Pascal 
D’Angelo tells how he left his pick and shovel 
behind to become a poet, I recall, with a vivid¬ 
ness of memory which has never been dimmed, 
that day in January 1922 when I first learned of 
his existence. At the time I was an editor of 
The Nation , overwhelmed with the rush of 
verse which had come in during the last days of 
December. As I used to wonder at about this 
season every year, I was wondering whether it 
was really worth any editor’s trouble to offer an 
annual prize for poetry, and was, as usual, 
growing skeptical and more skeptical over the 
bales of rhymed and unrhymed mediocrity 
which I had to handle. So many poems and so 
few poets! Then, without warning or premoni¬ 
tion, I came upon the letter to The Nation 
which Mr. D’Angelo now includes in his auto¬ 
biography. 

“This letter,” he said, “is the cry of a soul 
stranded on the shores of darkness looking for 
fight. ... I am a worker, a pick and shovel 
man—what I want is an outlet to express what I 
can say besides work. . . . There are no words 
that can fitly express my living sufferings. . . . 

ix 


x Introduction 

Let me free! Let me free! Free like the 
thought of love that haunts millions of minds. 
. . . Oh! please hear me! I am telling the 
truth. And yet who knows it? Only I. And 
who believes me? Then let my soul break out of 
its chrysalis of forced ignorance and fly toward 
the flower of hope, like a rich butterfly winged 
with a thousand thoughts of beauty.” 

If this was not an authentic cry, I had never 
heard one. It drowned the loud noises of Vesey 
Street; it seemed to me to widen the walls of 
my cramped office. As soon as I could, I 
arranged a meeting with the poet. He came with 
the mark of his hardships upon him. He must 
have been both cold and hungry at the time. 
Yet I found him full of that quiet patience which 
is the underlying quality of the peasants of his 
race, and capable of gaiety. Any reservation 
which I may heretofore have had now finally 
disappeared, particularly after he gave me an 
account of himself which was the outline later 
filled in to make A Son of Italy . I accepted some 
of his poems and sent him to editors who ac¬ 
cepted others. Moreover, I wrote a short 
article about him in the department of The 
Nation called The Roving Critic. The result 
was another evidence, if anybody needed it, of 
his authenticity. There came a surprising 
response from numerous quarters: inquiries 
about him, proffers of assistance. Persons in 


Introduction xi 

whom I had not suspected any^ such element 
revealed the poet buried in them by the eager¬ 
ness which they felt to serve this poet whom 
nothing had been able to bury. Within a few 
weeks Pascal D’Angelo was a name known 
everywhere among lovers of poetry. This fame 
might have enabled its possessor to accept any 
one of several editorial positions, but he had the 
artistic tact to decline them all. After paying 
so high a price to be a poet, he was not willing 
to take his reward in some meaner coin. 

Since then he has been faithful to his art, 
turning aside only long enough to tell his story 
in this book. How moving that story is the 
book must testify. It is the record of enormous 
struggles against every disadvantage. Some 
incalculable chance had put the soul of a poet in 
the body of an Italian boy whose parents could 
not read or write and who came into no heritage 
but the family tradition of hopeless labor. To 
this was added the further complication that he 
had to leave his native country for another, 
there to master an alien tongue and employ it 
for his utterance. That he gradually overcame 
his obstacles makes his career one of the most 
thrilling episodes in American literature. 

And A Son of Italy unquestionably belongs 
with the precious documents of the literature of 
Pascal D’Angelo’s adopted country. That liter¬ 
ature excels all others in the type of which his 


xii Introduction 

book is an example. But whereas most of the 
autobiographies of immigrants are content to 
tell how this or that new-comer fought his way 
up to the level of a competence and perhaps of 
some public post, A Son of Italy adds a new note. 
The uplands of Abruzzi sent to America not 
another laborer, not another contractor, not 
another politician, but another son of that Ovid 
whose fame is still the glory of Sulmona. No 
American hereafter, watching a gang of brown 
Italians busy in a ditch, can help asking himself 
whether there is not some Pascal D’Angelo 
among them, perhaps reasoning thus: “Who 
hears the thuds of the pick and the jingling of 
the shovel? Only the stern-eyed foreman sees 
me. When night comes and we all quit work the 
thuds of the pick and the jingling of the shovel 
are heard no more. All my works are lost, lost 
forever. But if I write a good line of poetry— 
then when the night comes and I cease writing, 
my work is not lost. My line is still there. It 
can be read by you today and by another to¬ 
morrow. But my pick and shovel works cannot 
be read either by you today or by any one else 
tomorrow.” Is this not the ageless sentiment of 
the artist who desires to snare some beauty and 
hold it above the waters of oblivion which drown 
all things, ugly and beautiful together? Who 
better than Pascal D’Angelo has snared the 
beauty of the contrast between a rushing train 


Introduction xiii 

and an inconspicuous pedestrian—a contrast 
which must have been near Mr. D’Angelo every 
day of his life as a laborerP 

“In the dark verdure of summer 
The railroad tracks are like the chords of a lyre gleam¬ 
ing across the dreaming valley, 

And the road crosses them like a flash of lightning. 

But the souls of many who speed like music on the melo¬ 
dious heart-strings of the valley 
Are dim with storms; 

And the soul of a farm lad who plods, whistling, on the 
lightning road 
Is a bright blue sky.” 


Carl Van Doren. 








Chapter I 


As I glance back over the time-shadowed sky 
of my infancy, I seem to see a vast expanse 
of mist that gives no light to any early 
events. But here and there looms a faint pyra¬ 
mid of recollection that can apparently never 
fade. Toward them I grope, almost in a twilight 
of memory, seeking to bring out what really 
happened to me while I passed through the little 
world of inevitable childhood and poverty. My 
first real recollection probably runs down to a 
little less than four years—for my grandmother 
died then. And I clearly remember when she 
made me go up to the garret to get onions in 
order to have them roasted under hot cinders 
of the wood fire that we used in place of a stove. 
It undoubtedly must have been winter, for it is 
in winter that such things are properly in use. 

She said, “Get the onions from under the bed, 
and we will roast and eat them.” 

So I began to climb the step ladder, hesitating. 
She climbed half the way up speaking words of 
encouragement. One of the chief causes for my 
fear at that time was that the garret had no 
window and the only light that came in was 
what penetrated through the cracks of the tile 
1 


Pascal D'Angelo 

roof. * I was also frightened at the horrible 
dragging noise of a caravan of enormous rats 
that promenaded back and forth along the roof 
under the hollow spaces of the clay tiles, our 
house being a “catless” house. 

This garret was divided in two unequal parts. 
The largest in front where the roof descended very 
low was filled with firewood. In the small center 
part was the bed on which my mother, my father, 
my brother and I slept. A very narrow bed it 
was. Almost every night I fell, having my 
head continually decorated with swollen spots 
about the size of a full ripe cherry. The reason 
for these falls was my being laid asleep beneath 
my mother’s and father’s feet, because I was 
bigger than my brother and therefore could 
better guard myself. My brother was two years 
younger than I. He lay between them while they 
slept uncomfortably on either side as if margin¬ 
ing the space of his safety. As I slept crosswise 
beneath their feet they could never stretch their 
legs, for whenever they did so they felt my little 
body and immediately shrank back frightened 
lest they push me off the bed. In spite of my 
few years, I sometimes could not sleep for lack 
of sufficient room. But when my parents got up 
to go to work, I could choose a better place, I 
and my brother being left on the bed to sleep 
all we wished. 


2 


Son of Italy 

One night—I really do not know what time 
it was, nor do I suppose my father knew, for 
poverty prevented our having a watch—I sud¬ 
denly awoke with a cry. It may have been 
during the dread-tangled midnight hours. A 
heavy patter of down-pouring rain was sweeping 
the rustic tile roof above our heads. It was the 
frequent and heavy drops of rain falling on my 
face that awoke me. 

Immediately I found myself up, and my 
awakened parents were putting a heavy deep 
clay plate on my sleeping place. I was shivering. 
But my mother gathered all her dresses and 
petticoats and put them on the floor, making a 
little bed for me to pass the unknown remainder 
of the night. 

In the lower part of the house was a general 
living room, kitchen and dining room. At night 
it was the sleeping place for the animals—the 
goats and sheep which we were lucky enough to 
own. 

Another time, probably much earlier than this, 
a child who was playing with me fell down—I 
don’t know how—and began to cry. Madly its 
mother hurried toward us as if I had been the 
cause of her child’s fall. As I saw her shriekingly 
approach me I tried to run away, but entangled 
in the threads of slow infancy, I could not. I 
felt her huge rage-gripping hand that caught my 
3 


Pascal D'Angelo 

loosely buttoned dress. Weeping I told her that 
I hadn’t done anything to her child. 

Promptly she said, “Then why are you run¬ 
ning away?” 

I didn’t know what to answer at first; but 
my fright gave me the ability to say, “Ask your 
child if I made him fall.” 

In answer she tried to catch me by the ears 
and drag me back to where her son was pleas¬ 
antly crying. I cried, “ What do you think I am, 
a rabbit, that you bring me by the ears?” 

Anyhow, she brought me in front of her child. 
Fortunately for me the boy told the truth, which 
is a rare thing. Otherwise I would have received 
a few healthy slaps that she had prepared for 
me. 

She answered that I was dismissed, and I went 
away solemnly thinking, “Wait till I grow 
bigger. Then if something happens I can 
courageously run away.” But that’s a thing I 
never did save once much later when I was about 
six or seven. 

At that time I found myself in front of my uncle’s 
house together with two other boys one of them 
three years older and the other about five months 
younger than I. In this case the cause is not as 
evident to my memory as the effect. Whatever 
it was, the bigger boy threw the younger one on 
the ground, and then putting a stone in my little 
4 


Son of Italy 

hand told me to hit him. I had no reason to do 
so, and even if I had I would have not done it, 
for ferocity has never been able to develop 
within me. 

The big boy had the younger lad pressed 
against the solid ground in front of my relatives’ 
house. All of a sudden I didn’t have the stone 
in my hand. Whether I threw it on the ground, 
or whether it fell out of my hand, I don’t know. 

Blood was coming from the fallen boy’s head 
and the bigger boy was shouting that I did it. 
It was sometime before noon. The small boy 
began to toddle crying toward his house with a 
few drops of blood gleaming on his forehead. 
And I—where could I go? My father wouldn’t 
defend me if his father came into my house to 
hit me, nor my mother if his mother came into 
my house and hit me. What my parents always 
told me was, “When you know that they are 
like that why do you go with them?” 

So I could not go home because I had no pro¬ 
tection there. Neither could I stay where I was, 
for the boy’s mother would soon be coming out 
to beat me. 

It would have been a good thing not to run 
away. But the boys, especially the younger, 
were insisting that I had made the wound and 
they would tell his people. 

What I had to do, I thought, was to avoid the 

5 


Pascal D'Angelo 

first storm of rage that his mother could cast 
upon me. I set myself walking hurriedly across 
the cultivated fields in order to find shelter or a 
hiding place. It was very hard to go across a 
vast stretch of freshly tilled land because my 
feet sank deep at every step. Amid the many 
various fields I was unable to find a safe refuge. 
Not too far away a provincial highway passes 
by with several little bridges. I chose the 
nearest one of them, under which no water was 
running. And there I hid under the low dark 
arch. Every now and then I peeked out to see if 
someone were coming toward me. I knew that 
I could easily be entrapped in that long narrow 
tunnel. I was afraid. Suppose someone had 
seen me and had told the boy’s mother that if 
she wanted me I could be found under the 
bridge? 

As I was glancing out, around a curve of the 
road, not far away from me loomed the figure of 
a large girl. She had ten or fifteen sheep and 
lambs before her and was slowly pasturing them 
on the sides of the broad, grass-shouldered road. 
Headlong I scampered back into the moist man¬ 
made den. I stood there thinking, confused, 
when a rough shout startled me: 

“What are you doing there?” 

All frightened I felt myself already caught. 
Hesitating, I went outward. I heard a lamb 
6 


Son of Italy 

bleating up the road, and I felt a little hope that 
she might just be a passing shepherdess, and not 
someone from the village seeking me. 

I went out with a peculiar expression on my 
face such as I had never had before, one of forced 
innocence. Once out on the road I recognized 
her as that boy’s sister. 

Curiously she asked me why I was hiding in 
there. She did not appear to know what had 
happened, probably having been out with her 
sheep and lambs all day long. 

Her presence seemed like a storm before me— 
those storms that madly seize the placid silence 
of our valley. I trembled in front of her. 

She was older than I. Therefore I moved 
away slowly at first. Her eyes followed me in 
astonishment. And then at a good distance I 
shouted out to her what they accused me of. 

“No!” she answered with an incredulous air, 
“it’s not true. It cannot be. I don’t believe 
it.” 

“Well,” I answered, a little assured and mov¬ 
ing nearer, “I myself don’t believe it either, but 
the others do.” 

She hesitated a moment. She really thought 
I was joking with her and seemed decided to 
show that I couldn’t fool her. 

So, after a little silence she laughed in that 
skeptic way that the people of our valley have. 
7 


Pascal D'Angelo 

And shaking her head she went on, pasturing 
her sheep slowly and gradually disappearing 
beyond the hiding curve of the broad road. 

Now and then I could hear the bleating of the 
lambs in the distance. Finally these sounds 
ceased and the countryside became still and 
serene as before. 

I descended the green escarpment and, having 
no better place to go, went back under the little 
narrow bridge, fully dominated by fear. I prob¬ 
ably must have wept a little, too. Gradually, 
while weeping, I abandoned myself upon the 
soothing bosom of dreams. And I slept, or just 
half-slept. I even forgot that I had not eaten— 
which is a child’s principal concern. Perhaps all 
was well. 

Now and then a horse wagon went rumbling 
by, like a harsh note in my vague dreams. 
Braying asses went past and their sounds spread 
lazily across the vast green of the crop-laden 
fields. I dreamed. 

At first my dreams were vain infantile fancies, 
little fallacies that the mind of a child can sketch 
on the pallor of vision. But gradually a great 
struggle awoke in my dream. I was climbing a 
hard monstrous mountain, I did not know why. 
It was vaster and more tremendous than our 
glorious Majella, the mother mountain. I did 
not know why I struggled so hard, but I was 
8 


Son of Italy 

being urged onward—an awakened spirit in me 
was yearning to reach the top. Finally, after 
a long time I found myself on the highest heaven- 
touching peak of this mystic enormity. A tree, 
soft and green glowed up there with a tempting 
nest filled with the most beautiful birds that I 
could ever imagine. I climbed. The mountain 
below caved in. The branch that I clung to 
broke. And down I fell, down, down, forever. 

With a start I awoke. I was frightened. 
Young though I was I felt the presence of some¬ 
thing invisible yet existent, which had shown 
itself in my dream. 

We of the uplands of Abruzzi are a different 
race. The inhabitants of the soft plains of 
Latium and Apulia where in winter we pasture 
our sheep consider us a people of seers and poets. 
We believe in dreams. There are strange beings 
walking through our towns whose existence, we 
know, are phantasies. We have men who can 
tell the future and ageless hags who know the 
secrets of the mountain and can cure all illness 
save witchcraft with a few words. 

As I crouched there in fright I felt a tremor 
in the air. A volume of wind came pouring 
through the tunnel. A stream came trickling 
through. I heard the rain beating down. Light¬ 
ning flashed around. The volume of the torrent 
under the bridge was increasing with every 
9 


Pascal D'Angelo 

second. Out into the storm I ran, caring only 
to reach home. Immediately I was wet to the 
skin. It was impossible to go across the glis¬ 
tening, soggy fields. I had to follow the road, 
which was a long round-about way. 

Hunger possessed me. Home seemed very de¬ 
sirable. I began to cry while trudging on. It 
was getting dark. 

By that time the boy’s sister must have 
reached the hamlet and told her parents about 
me. They were probably watching from their 
stone house for my return. Little by little the 
rainfall ceased, and a pouring night wiped all the 
rosy stains of twilight from the tattered clouds. 
As I hesitated, I could see, far below me the 
little cluster of houses that formed our hamlet, 
pale against the black gleaming fields. The 
smoke from these houses rose upward in twisting 
colonnades and blent with the wild infinity of 
night. A fight appeared at one window. And 
still I hesitated, fearing to approach my home. 

Finally, little by little, I drew near. Members 
of the boy’s family were outside the house, some 
were at their windows. I heard someone shout¬ 
ing my name. And I knew that they were 
searching for me. 

Well, were my thoughts, it’s not a murder I 
have committed, so I might as well approach and 
hear their shrieking preludes. If these are ex- 
10 


Son of Italy 

tremely unpleasant and threatening, I can easily 
vanish again into the night. 

Making a show of bravery, I marched de¬ 
cisively onward. I would hardly be safe in my 
own house, for they would come in and beat me 
there. Being older and practically relatives they 
had the right to do that, and my father would 
not think of stopping them. 

As I approached, trembling, I heard my 
mother’s soothing voice calling my name and 
saying that there was no serious trouble, only a 
little scratch the child must have received when 
the big boy threw him down. 

Instinctively I sobbed out, like a lamb that 
answers the bleating call of its mother. 

I ran on. Soon I reached the half-broken 
three steps that led up to my house. As I was 
on the second step I felt a rough hand grab my 
shoulder and lips shouting in my ear. 

I trembled and howled. My mother’s voice 
uttered sharply, “Let him go! You know he has 
done nothing.” 

It was that boy’s oldest brother who had 
caught me and had shouted to frighten me, 
probably as a compensation for what I had been 
accused of doing to his brother. 

Sullenly the tall young man answered, “Don’t 
be afraid, I am only fooling.” And to me, “You 
didn’t do anything to him, otherwise I would 
11 


Pascal D'Angelo 

have searched you out no matter where you had 
hidden.” 

Overjoyed, with assured innocence, I entered 
the house in one leap. 

And my mother smiled after me. 


12 


Chapter II 


T he hamlet where I was born on January 
20, 1894, is comprised of a small group 
of stone houses near Introdacqua and not 
very far from the old walled city of Sulmona. In¬ 
trodacqua nestles at the head of a beautiful valley 
whose soft green is walled in by the great blue 
barrens of Monte Majella. The mother moun¬ 
tain looms to the east of us and receives the full 
splendor of the dawn. We are proud to call our¬ 
selves the sons of the majestic Majella. And our 
race, the ancient Samnites, is said to have sprung 
from those sunny altitudes and spread their 
power over all Italy, making even Rome tremble. 

Few roads run to this quiet land and the old 
traditions have never entirely died out there. 
Below the town is the garden of Ovid with wild 
roses and cool springs, and above is an ancient 
castle that in summer is fantastically crowned 
with mingling flights of wild pigeons that take 
care of their younglings on its towered heights. 
In the valley beyond are finely cultivated fields 
dotted with the ruins of Italica, the capital of 
fierce Samnium. 

One day, when I was about six, my mother 
had to go to the town, which was a little more 
13 


Pascal D'Angelo 

than “half an hour’s walk” away. Childishly, 
I insisted on going with her. 

Unsuccessfully my mother tried to keep down 
the tiny folly that had intruded into my young 
mind. I began to wail and cry. She made many 
promises that are wonderful to children and can 
only be told to them. I wanted to go. 

She told me that the town was too far—Oh! 
very far—that I would get tired before we 
reached half way. 

“It’s not far,” I insisted, “we can hear the 
bells when it gets dark.” 

“But the bells are placed away up high on the 
church tower,” she explained. I refused to 
understand. 

She continued, “Just because the sound reaches 
us doesn’t mean that they are near. Look—the 
water comes here, too, passing by our neighbor’s 
house. And see what a distance it comes from,” 
pointing with her finger toward where the peaks 
of the azure mountain were barely visible in a 
mist of heights with their red rifts that seemed 
to be the unhealed scars left by the storms that 
rage up there. Only a ruddy cloud was kinging 
the softened blue above them. 

As she spoke I saw my mother’s eyes gaze 
anxiously at that cloud hovering over the moun¬ 
tain. At that time she seemed to be the most 
beautiful woman in the world to me, though I 
14 


Son of Italy 

now realize how care and hard work had given 
her face a thoughtful expression. 

However, we set out. I walked ahead as fast 
as I could and she sauntered slowly with me. 
We had hardly gone a few minutes when some¬ 
thing seemed to have blurred the sun. Again my 
mother looked around. The sky was no longer 
clear blue, but had a pale misty color. We hur¬ 
ried on, that is, I walked as fast as I could and 
she followed me. 

Now, in a few minutes a darkness settled upon 
the valley. It seemed as if it closed in from every 
side. And thunder rumbled. My mother looked 
around. I became frightened. Lightning tore 
across the sky over the mountain. And all at 
once the rain came flooding down. Quickly my 
mother picked me up and ran for a small stone 
hut nearby. As she approached through the 
twisting curtain of rain two savage dogs dashed 
out toward us. They had their heads low and 
mouths open, growling evilly. I cried in fear. 
My mother stopped and in a sharp voice called 
out. Someone whistled. The dogs stopped 
short. An old man appeared at the door of the 
hut and stared at us through the wild rain. On 
either side of the house were two tall scrawny 
trees with their lower branches cut off to prevent 
a shadow from hurting the crops below. 

This man had been known as a sort of wizard. 
15 


Pascal D'Angelo 

He lived alone and had little to do with the 
world. He seemed to hate all who came near 
him. He cried in a harsh voice, “What do you 
want?” 

“Shelter.” 

He laughed and called back his dogs. Just 
then the two trees alongside the hut became 
tipped with flame and something like a great 
star appeared in the doorway over the man’s 
head. And a terrific thunder broke upon us. 
The man fell. The lightning had blinded us all 
for an instant. Then my mother, who still 
gripped me in her arms, shrieked and began to 
run down the road. Down, toward the town, 
through the rain, dashing through pools of 
water she fled. At the first houses some of the 
people came out and helped her in. I was 
wondering. 

My mother, hysterically, cried out the news 
that the old man had been struck by the fires of 
heaven. Out rushed the men, through the rain 
which was increasing every minute. After a 
short while they came back, all wet, and sadly 
announced that he was dead. Everybody seemed 
dazed. Meanwhile, the storm was tearing across 
our valley. Great whirls of shining rain were 
swaying about. The house shook as the thunder 
crashed nearby. And I had begun to get ac¬ 
quainted with a boy in the house and we were 
16 


Son of Italy 

sitting on the floor playing with walnuts that we 
had taken from a box. 

This was the first really tragic incident in my 
life and it made a profound impression upon me, 
not so much at that time as later in my memory. 
I Introdacqua is a beautiful town and nature 
appears to have squandered beauty on the sur¬ 
rounding vistas. The people are very quiet and 
extremely peaceful. 

When good seasons are with us the valley is 
happy and the sturdy peasants walk jovially to 
work in the early morning, and sing in harmony 
with the heaven-soaring larks. But when the 
years are bad and the dreaded droughts hover 
over the land they are silent and one sees sorrow, 
care and even hunger in their eyes. 

But one good season will make them happy 
again. And in the evenings after a hard day’s 
toil, they will stay out late in the moonlight 
when the nightingales sing. And in spite of 
having heard them so often, these peasants’ 
interest and desire to hear them again seems to 
be ceaseless. 

But we, the young ones, had a mania for 
birds’ nests rather than their songs. And we 
were always prowling through the neighboring 
fields, in groups, seeking them. Up we climbed, 
up apple trees, cherry trees, almond trees, and 
in short, up any place on which a little nest 
17 


Pascal D'Angelo 

might be perched. In the spring when every¬ 
thing is in flower and tender we caused quite a 
little damage. 

Inevitably after these expeditions, on reach¬ 
ing home, we received beatings from our par¬ 
ents. But we didn’t care. And sometimes, after 
the whippings we would get together in the home 
of one of us and talk. Then one would try to 
show how brave he would have been in case we 
had found a nest upon some tree whose trunk 
and branches were crowded with coils of freshly 
budded grape vines. This was the sole thing we 
had any respect for, and experience had taught 
us that any depredation committed on the grape 
vines would be severely punished. First we had 
to deal with the owner if he had good eyes to 
see us and good legs to catch us; but more certain 
was the punishment of our parents who on learn¬ 
ing of our misdeed would beat us severely. And 
there was no escaping our fathers either. But 
my boyhood was not all play, and very early I 
knew what work was. 

Still there were dreams for me. A poem of 
mine which was printed long afterwards may 
perhaps give an idea of the region and light sur¬ 
rounding me: 

MIDDAY 

The road is like a little child running ahead of me and 
then hiding behind a curve— 

18 


Son of Italy 

Perhaps to surprise me when I reach there. 

The sun has built a nest of light under the eaves of noon; 
A lark drops down from the cloudless sky 
Like a singing arrow, wet with blue, sped from the bow of 
space. 

But my eyes pierce the soft azure, far, far beyond, 

To where roam eternal lovers 
Along the broad blue ways 
Of silence. 

I was sent to school at the age of seven. It 
was a small place kept by a gentle voiced lady. 
My attendance was very irregular, for I was the 
first boy of the family big enough to help my 
parents. My father had five or six sheep and 
four goats and I had to watch them—not be¬ 
cause he wanted to prevent my going to school, 
but because he could not afford to hire an older 
boy. In spite of my frequent absences, however, 
I was much ahead of the average and not far 
behind the best. And their advantage grew 
from the fact that their fathers and mothers 
knew how to read and write while mine did not. 

To tell the truth, I learned more from listen¬ 
ing to some of my elders than from my irregular 
attendance at school. There was old gray haired 
Melengo, the beggar, for instance. He was ex¬ 
tremely ragged and dirty, but his mind was 
crystal-clear. He was always saying strange 
things that people would laugh at, as I did at 
that time. But now as I remember a few of his 
19 


Pascal D'Angelo 

sayings they take on a profound significance. 
For instance, one of his favorite expressions was, 
“Humanity is a cyclone that does not come to 
moisten our fields, but to flood them.” Another 
was, “Sleep is a soft dagger that kills our day 
dreams—while we are young.” And another, 
“Youth of woman is a boiling cauldron and love 
the over-brimming water that quenches its 
flames.” 

Melengo had been to South America in his 
youth and had led a wild life the very mention 
of which made the women of our town turn their 
eyes in horror toward heaven. 

There was also Alberto, the shepherd, a tall 
man with square bronzed face and an immense 
hairy chest. He was one of the best known, 
shepherds of that region and enjoyed a popular 
renown as the only shepherd who would tell the 
truth. His attitude of thoughtful resignation 
was sublime. Whatever might happen, he 
merely regarded it as part of his daily chore. 
The spirits walked with him in the twilight 
splendor of the upper mountains and the aerial 
invisible powers had full control of his mind. 
If there was trouble or sorrow “it was the will 
of those whose methods are not for us to under¬ 
stand.” 

Alberto was a remarkable player of the bag¬ 
pipe—that poetic, eternal instrument of the soli- 
20 


Son of Italy 

tary shepherds. And I remember how on an 
autumn evening he would sit on a bench not 
far from our door. And while the great sun 
vanished into an abyss of red, he would play rich 
harmonious music that was born, even as he 
was, out of those mystic mountains. 

One winter Alberto went down with his sheep 
toward the green plains of Apulia and failed to 
return with the spring. I never could find out 
exactly what caused his death. Perhaps he van¬ 
ished one night and followed his invisible com¬ 
panions into the haunted solitudes. Who knows? 

By the time I was twelve I stopped going to 
school entirely and began my fife of continuous 
toil. It is, in fact, the custom among us for 
boys and girls, on reaching twelve to stop attend¬ 
ing school to become either a household instru¬ 
ment or a little farmer. 

Everybody works. There is poverty. Often 
there is not enough to eat. There are among us 
many women whose husbands have gone to alien 
lands. Sometimes money does not come from 
across the sea. Perhaps the father is out of work, 
perhaps he has been hurt in an accident or even 
killed. These women do not waste much time 
in crying. They take up the task of keeping 
the household going with as little expense as 
possible. Everyone in their family must help, 
down to the children barely able to walk. 

21 


Pascal D'Angelo 

Everyone works. The mother will probably hire 
a small piece of land and cultivate it. If she has 
a baby it is placed under the shade of the nearest 
tree. And the strong mother tills and finally 
harvests the products of their collective toil. 

Perhaps a drought comes. Then the streams 
dry up. Frantically, the mother will work over 
the shrunken and yellow plants. And probably, 
after a long struggle she will have to abandon her 
field, in despair, and leave the sickly plants to 
die under the merciless sun. 

Droughts are the terror of our valley and often 
have I seen people with hunger in their eyes gaz¬ 
ing upward at the serene blue sky and begging 
for rain. 

Both my parents worked out in the fields and 
received a small pittance for wages. And I too 
had to help them intermittently from the time 
I was very young. And I can safely say that 
work rather than school was the important ele¬ 
ment in my boyhood. We were very poor people. 
We rarely had meat, and our food was of the 
poorest kind. Yet we were happy. There was 
no such thing as sickness among us. In fact, the 
inhabitants of our valley are among the tallest 
and most finely developed people in all Italy. 
And many of our women who work out on the 
fields at the side of their husbands are stronger 
than the men. 


22 


Son of Italy 

I was at twelve a large nimble boy. I would 
have liked to play. And while toiling in the 
hot sunblaze of the fields I would dream of the 
cool upper reaches of the mountains. And of 
the plump yellow lizards that we boys hunted 
by the hedgerows. And the games and escapades 
dear to the hearts of boys. But when the exces¬ 
sive work of spring and harvest time was over, 
then I would pasture my sheep up on the moun¬ 
tains that I loved. And I had no cares, and I 
would sing to myself, pausing perhaps to hear 
my own echo descending upon me. 

The inspiration of Monte Majella above me, I 
later sought to express in a poem, which after 
many vicissitudes was finally printed in “The 
Nation:” 

“The mountain in a prayer of questioning heights gazes 
upward at the dumb heavens, 

And its inner anger is forever bursting forth 
In twisting torrents. 

Like little drops of dew trickling along the crevices 
Of this giant questioner 

I and my goats were returning toward the town below. 
But my thoughts were of a little glen where wild roses 
grow 

And cool springs bubble up into blue pools. 

And the mountain was insisting for an answer from the 
still heaven.” 


23 


Chapter III 


T here is a continuous stream of beggars 
from strange places that passes through our 
town. Especially during festive days when 
they crowd the entrances of Introdacqua. And 
it seems that many of them find it so pleasant 
and the people so generous that they make a 
sort of permanent abode in our midst. Yet the 
givers themselves are very poor, though rich in 
kindness. What alms they hand out consist 
mostly of pieces of bread, a cutting of salted 
pork or a plate of soup. And usually they add 
a glass or two of the best wine in the house, 
with sincere impartiality. 

This vast tribe of human derelicts is mostly 
composed of cripples, lame creatures hardly able 
to struggle along, and those struck by disease 
or by absolute poverty. Into this sad torrent 
there has intrusively entered a more evil ele¬ 
ment, namely, those who play on the supersti¬ 
tions and fear of the simple country people. So 
we find witches, vampires and wizards demand¬ 
ing food and respect from the poor peasants— 
and getting it. 


24 


'Son of Italy 

Like a dark promontory of fright overshadow¬ 
ing a craving sea of beggars, loomed a strange 
woman in our town. She had come from the 
weird barrens of the mountains, before I was 
born, and had made her home among us. She 
was gazed at, but scarcely seemed to see any¬ 
one as she passed through the crooked streets of 
our town. Yet a shudder ran through the hearts 
of all who beheld her, especially those mothers 
with small children. 

Whenever this woman loomed darkly in the 
sunny doorway of a house, there was an instinc¬ 
tive handing forth of gifts, with trembling hands. 
And the peasant wife would fall white-faced into 
a chair when the shadow had passed. 

When I was about six I first began to notice 
this weird creature. She was old and ugly 
then. Yet people whispered that in her youth 
she had been of strange loveliness, when she 
haunted the upper mountains and the blue 
spaces of Majella. And it was said that the 
sneers of a young shepherd had brought her 
down to haunt our town. She was the daughter 
of a terrible wizard who lived on the mother 
mountain. And now this lovely creature had 
become old and shrunken; but her eyes had a 
strange majesty in them. 

Whenever she would try to enter our house 
I and my brothers would hide ourselves under 
25 


Pascal D'Angelo 

our parents’ bed, trembling with fear. For this 
woman was generally reputed to be a vampire; 
and to anger her was almost certain death. 

When I got to be about nine I was told in all 
seriousness by an adult that if anyone put salt 
on her head and then observed her actions, it 
could be plainly seen that she was a vampire. 
For as soon as salt touched her hair she would 
scream and writhe in agony. And a plain woman 
would not have been so strangely affected by it. 
All of this awoke the curiosity in us boys to put 
salt on the old hag’s head. And there were many 
attempts and ambushes, but she seemed to be 
fortunate in eluding our best laid plans. And 
besides, we always felt very tremulous at her 
approach, especially if we held some accusing 
salt. 

Time passed. Some of the older lads, when 
in a group, would attempt to give this woman 
some slight annoyance. To put salt on her head 
was a sort of golden goal for most of us boys. 
But we always had to run for it; for whenever 
she saw us coming and thought we meant mis¬ 
chief, she would bend, pick up a stone and heave 
it violently after us, shouting strange words that 
made our hearts quake. 

I remember one day, though, when this wild 
creature allowed us to approach her. It was a 
beautiful September afternoon when the rosy 
26 


Son of Italy 

cheeks of the mature apples beautify their 
laden branches; when the various fields of grape 
are quickly ripening and the figs lure the passerby 
with their boughs spread to the broad sun. 

She was squatted on the soft grass in the cool 
shadow and began to murmur to herself. She 
was mumbling something about “stregoneria,” 
or witchcraft. Gradually, one by one, a group 
of women and children gathered around her, 
listening to her weird words. Within their 
minds, long ploughed and harrowed by supersti¬ 
tion, the mutterings of the hag took root quickly. 
They all gazed as if fascinated. I remember I 
was peering from between two fat women while 
she spoke of her powers. 

Finally the hag stopped, ending a sentence in 
air, and with eyes half-shut, arose. And she 
began the round of the village asking alms as 
usual. The startled group followed at a respect¬ 
ful distance. 

Whatever was given her, whether potatoes, 
corn, pieces of bread or salt pork, she put to¬ 
gether into a large sack. When it was full she 
tightened the end of it, slung it on her head, 
and started toward her home on the edge of the 
town. And her eyes were gleaming and always 
glancing around, watchful for boys and girls 
who would try to put salt on her head—to dis¬ 
cover her dark secrets. 

27 


Pascal D'Angelo 

This was her life. When the food was con¬ 
sumed, she would reappear—to the terror of the 
town. She was also very clever, and knew how 
to vary her rounds so as not to visit one place 
too often. She also kept clear of the isolated 
places in the country where they kept bad dogs 
who would attack her, witch or no witch. 

There were a few of the bolder men, also, who 
refused to give her anything, but their wives 
usually made up the difference with the witch 
in secret. 

Now it happened, when I was about thirteen, 
that there was a big holiday in our town in honor 
of its patron saints. A large group of men were 
gathered in the tavern. And as is usual with 
men, after a few applications of wine, they 
seemed to have reached the acme of eloquence. 
Each had a good deal to say about some favorite 
subject that came within their knowledge. And 
the hours passed with plenty of wine and topics 
consumed. 

While they were joking at each other, one of 
the men’s wives happened to go there and beg 
her husband to go home. 

One of the more drunken men shouted at her, 
“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, there are no 
women here to rob your husband!” 

There was another man in the place and he 
was leaning against the wall, apparently asleep. 

28 


Son of Italy 

But the drunken fellow, turning, noticed him 
and shouted jovially to wake him up. 

Now when a man falls asleep in a conversation, 
we have two or three choice expressions for it. 
We say, “Where has he been—irrigating his field 
last night?” or “Has he been stealing cucum¬ 
bers?” or, finally, “What’s the matter, has he 
been vampiring last night that he had no time 
to sleep?” It was the last expression that the 
drunkard used. 

Immediately the conversation started upon 
the subject of vampires. It was an amusing 
lot of supersitition, I remember, for I was there 
with my father. Some horrible anecdotes were 
told, in all seriousness. And I can say that, 
what with the wine and the gruesome subject, 
they were all impressed. Time passed, and still 
the conversation went on, with increasing zest. 

The other wives came. Some brought their 
children along; and they all began to shout that 
it was time to go home—as it really was. All of 
them were invited to drink by their husbands 
or brothers. Some of the women laughed, one 
or two groaned and looked on statue-like, wait¬ 
ing for the breaking of the conversation.. At 
the same time one of the most eloquent women 
among them—they were all eloquent on occa¬ 
sion—was directing her speech toward those who 
formed the stronghold of the conversation. 

29 


Pascal D'Angelo 

“Ah-ha!” exclaimed the woman, a portly be¬ 
ing, “now is the time to go vampiring.” 

Another woman answered, “Oh yes! if you 
were that witch of Majella.” 

Just then one of the men staggered to his 
feet, and turning slowly, imperious with wine, 
shouted to his wife, “Don’t give her anything 
more—not a crumb! Do you understand? Or 
else I’ll settle with you!” And growling curses 
about the hag he brought his fist down on the 
table. 

He was a tall handsome young man, with 
dark eyes and curly black hair and a complexion 
more dusky than most of us. His wife, a little 
blue-eyed woman was accustomed to obey him. 
They had only been married about two years, 
and had one child, a pretty boy. 

And with a general round of drunken curses 
against the witch the conversation broke up. 
But as we turned to go out, someone whispered, 
“There she is!” 

A low moon hovered over the ragged edge of 
the mountains. The street in front of the tavern 
was flooded with a ghostly light. And darkly 
through this pallor receded slowly the black 
looming form of the witch. 

“She was here!” 

“She has been listening to us!” 

Many hurried conjectures were made. I dare 
30 


Son of Italy 

say most of the men and women were frightened 
and, to atone, gave the witch extra portions of 
tribute when she called again at their homes. 

But the wife of that tall peasant did not. 
Somehow the husband’s command clung to her 
memory. 

One day the witch stood in dark silent threat 
on the threshold. 

Quickly the wife blurted out the words that 
she had been repeating to herself several days, 
“Go I I cannot give you anything—go I” 

The hag opened her dreamy eyes wide and 
glistening. “Ah I You have changed I” she ex¬ 
claimed, “and so suddenly, eh?” 

Just then the husband approached with a 
“bidento” on his shoulders. Quickly running 
up and cursing wildly he drove the old hag away. 
She hurried on, muttering evilly. From within 
the house came the cries of a baby. 

After that their son, a beautiful boy of six 
months, began to sicken. Alarmed, the mother 
went to see the doctor, probably an incompetent 
one. He gave the child some medicine which 
didn’t do any good. 

In our valley a baby who cannot be relieved 
from an immediate illness will be at once classi¬ 
fied as an innocent victim of the vampires. 

The distracted mother went around getting 
advice from other women. They all knew what 
31 


Pascal D'Angelo 

had happened. They came to the house, old 
and young. 

Pathetically the mother sobbed, “My child! 
My child!” 

Meanwhile the townswomen were examining 
the baby for any evidence of witchcraft. “Poor 
child!” they exclaimed discordantly, looking up, 
“it is reduced to bones—look! All skin and 
bones. And it was such a chubby little thing. 
The witch! The witch has taken hold of his 
life!” 

One gaunt old woman exclaimed sharply, “She 
is too powerful. It’s a pity—but I doubt whether 
the baby can be saved especially if she has passed 
the poor creature over the flames!” 

And with heads bowed the women of the town 
went out leaving the sobbing mother. 

I was lingering outside the door, in a shivering 
sort of curiosity. From what I gathered the 
witch must have entered as a spirit through the 
keyhole, for there were no horns in back of the 
door to prevent her. And putting the parents 
in a profound dream, she had taken the child. 
Outside she had invoked the spirit on which she 
rides through the storms. 

In a second she had found herself beneath the 
great walnut tree of Benevento under which are 
spurting up mystic flames. There were many 
hags around all holding helpless infants. After 
32 


Son of Italy 

they had drawn blood from them, the hags 
passed the little naked bodies over the flames. 
After that the children irreparably died—since 
no medicine in the world could save them. And 
the townswomen went on murmuring and tremu¬ 
lous. 

Often the vampires themselves are fearful of 
their nocturnal prowlings and would escape the 
enchantment which binds them, if possible. But 
they are caught in the coils of some hideous 
diabolic power. 

I was told of one unwilling vampire who asked 
a friend, a young housewife, to save her from the 
enchantment. The head wizard of the district 
was angered, but if the friend was courageous 
enough he could do nothing against them. If 
she was afraid they both would die. 

So the vampire got on a horse with her friend 
and invoked the spirit of the storm, “I shall be 
the twenty-fourth in the procession that passes 
around the tree,” she told the young lady, “do 
not forget!” 

Immediately they were under the black gi¬ 
gantic tree whose heavy branches twisted and 
coiled across the starry sky. 

The vampire jumped from the horse and 
rushed into the procession taking her place. The 
friend crouched to the ground outside the circle 
of light. When the procession approached, the 
33 


Pascal D'Angelo 

unwilling vampire looked pleadingly toward her. 
Immediately invoking the saints and the power 
of Ovidio, the young girl sprang at the hideous 
procession and pierced the woman with a needle. 
At the same instant they both vanished from 
that strange tribe, and each found herself in her 
own house. And the vampire, freed of all en¬ 
chantment, became a most respectful and holy 
lady. And they both went to heaven at death, 
added my informer with grave nods. 

This tale awoke in me the ambitious desire to 
pierce the old hag with a big needle. But—how 
to get near her was a problem. She had an 
especially evil eye for me because I was one of 
the most persistent of the salt throwers. I con¬ 
fided my ambition to my best friend, Antonio, 
and he immediately ran away from fright. But 
after a few hours he came back and announced 
that he was willing to aid me in my attempt. 

The old witch was now more feared and 
respected than ever before. Some women 
brought her presents and begged her to free the 
baby of the enchantment. She grabbed the 
gifts with her bony hands and grinned upward, 
showing her yellow teeth. In horror they hur¬ 
ried away. 

Meanwhile the poor mother who was waiting 
a short distance away sobbed over the child, 
“0 unfortunate babel The ugly witch wants 
34 


Son of Italy 

you to die! I hide you on my breast, but the 
heavy sleep of the vampire wins me!” 

And pressing the thin child to her breast she 
walked—almost staggered—home to prepare 
supper for her husband. He was coming back 
from wheat reaping where in place of his wife he 
had to hire another woman so that his wife could 
freely attend the sick child. 

Unable to get near enough to the witch I and 
Antonio decided to try our needle on someone 
else. There was a poor fat old woman who 
puffed exceedingly whenever she moved her pon¬ 
derous body through the town. I now believe 
that she was suffering from asthma. After much 
deliberation we two decided that she was a vam¬ 
pire or about to become one. 

One evening, after dusk, we stole up behind her 
and with a vigorous shove thrust a long needle 
into her leg, piercing a few layers of petticoats. 

With a shriek she turned about and instead 
of thanking us proceeded to pummel and kick 
us until we regained our wits and used our 
speedy legs. 

This fiasco chilled our ardor for only a day or 
so. And one night, not long afterwards, I re¬ 
member, we got our chance to pierce the witch! 
The village was a dense twisting sea of gloom. 
The last light still glimmered on the heights 
around the white town. The castle, an indis- 
35 


Pascal D'Angelo 

tinct giant form, stood lording the black hollows. 
The pacing donkeys were returning with their 
owners riding on them through the unlit dark¬ 
ness. 

I and Antonio were prowling tremulously 
through the town. Someone had told us that 
the witch was about, having foraged for food all 
day. We were scared, and pressed together 
from fright as we walked. I had a formidable 
needle—as big as what they used for sewing 
mattresses. 

“Perhaps she will be cured,” I whispered. 

“And she may give us the gold she has hid¬ 
den,” he agreed. 

Just as we turned a corner Antonio whispered, 
“Sssh!” 

The old hag was climbing a steep stony 
street to one side. It was very dark there. Steal¬ 
ing up on tip-toes, close to the line of houses we 
gradually approached her. She was going up 
very slowly, puffing and mumbling to herself. 
We were now a few feet away from her. Care¬ 
fully, barefooted, we made no sound and were 
undiscovered. We paused. Antonio was push¬ 
ing my arm as if to say, “You do it.” I was 
pushing his arm. She kept going up. Now 
was our chance. All at once a determination 
possessed me and I sprang out toward her. I 
was just two steps from her, needle raised in my 
36 


Son of Italy 

hand, when she wheeled about with a fearsome 
yell and raised her bony arms. 

I saw her looming above me, her fingers 
twisted, her eyes wide open and her sharp teeth 
gleaming. With a cry of pain and fear I and 
Antonio rushed headlong down the street. And 
we didn’t stop running until we had reached our 
homes. 

For a few days I and my friend kept as close 
to our houses as possible. To tell the truth I 
hardly slept for almost a week expecting always 
to see the hideous vampire hovering over me at 
night. 

About a month had passed since the child 
was first seized by the mysterious consuming 
malady, and report had it that the little tot 
could not live more than another week. 

A big black cat—probably astray—had been 
seen prowling near the baby’s cradle. Everyone 
swore that it was the witch, which was con¬ 
clusive evidence. The mother herself was getting 
sick from sorrow and worry. 

The young father was frantic and walked 
fiercely through the streets. “ If she has any¬ 
thing to revenge, or any spite to do, why does 
she make our little innocent son the victim?” 
he would say. “ Why doesn’t she revenge herself 
upon me? But I’ll make her pay for this.” 
And with a peasant’s insistence, as if hypnotized 
37 


Pascal D'Angelo 

by the words, he kept repeating, “Why must an 
innocent baby suffer for its parents’ folly? Why 
must the innocent suffer?” 

One morning there was a great talk and uproar 
in Introdacqua. It was reported that the witch 
had been driven from the town. The father had 
gathered some of his braver relatives and “com- 
pari” and they had beaten and driven the hag 
out into the night and destroyed the hut in 
which she lived. 

Immediately we all rushed up to see the ruins 
of her home. There was a great crowd on the 
hilly ground, all keeping at a respectful distance 
from the pile of stones and cinders. 

Many of the women were visibly alarmed and 
were crying to one another that the witch’s 
father—the eternal wizard of Majella—would 
in vengeance destroy our town. 

But the autumn days passed and nothing hap¬ 
pened. A great shadow seemed to be lifted 
from our town. The witch had disappeared up 
in the mountains and no one knew where she 
was. 

One day I was pasturing my goats and sheep 
on the broad shoulder of the immense mountain. 
Higher and higher we went, gradually leaving 
the castle below us, and reaching the clear bright 
regions of stunted trees and fitful mountain 
storms. Far below me was the white town and 
38 


Son of Italy 

to the north stretched the vast glorious valley 
that was for so many centuries the stronghold 
of the mighty Samnites. In a hazy softness of 
distance it appeared, threaded by the Pescara, 
the blue river. There gleamed Sulmona, sur¬ 
rounded by its towered walls. And there nestled 
the villages of the Marsi, and further north, 
though hidden in mists, I knew was Aquila, the 
city of the eagle. 

A continuous movement stirred the pure air. 
The animals were ever cropping grassjbefore me 
as I pastured them higher and higher toward the 
rocky flanks of the upper peaks. 

There was something dark like a black boulder 
at the end of a long grassy stretch in front of me. 
In curiosity, on my guard, I approached it, grip¬ 
ping my strong cudgel. 

Just as I was about five steps away, it sprang 
up throwing out arms enclosed in black rags. 
With a gasp of horror I stopped short. There in 
front of me, tall and erect, stood the fearsome 
witch. 

I had the impulse to turn and scamper down 
the mountain, abandoning all, sheep, goats, staff. 

But as I looked up at her, in fright, I felt a 
strange feeling of pity. There was no hatred, no 
anger in her gray eyes. There was an animal 
fear. I have seen it in the eyes of young helpless 
birds. Her arms were very thin and bony, one of 
39 


Pascal D'Angelo 

her feet had been wounded, probably on the 
sharp stones of the mountains, and she had tied a 
woolen rag around it. 

For a moment we looked at one another there, 
high up on the solitary mountains. She did not 
appear to see me, for her eyes seemed to gaze 
through me as through a crystal to some point far 
beyond, beyond the skies. Then her mouth 
opened, and in a piteous weak voice she cried, 
“I am hungry!” 

Without hesitating, as if obeying a command, I 
took my scanty lunch from the bag slung over 
my shoulder and handed it to her. Quickly she 
stepped forward and grabbed it. And raven¬ 
ously, cramming her mouth and staring around 
with wild eyes, she consumed the food. As if 
fascinated, fearing and pitying her, I watched the 
poor creature gulping down my food. When she 
had finished she looked around as if for more. I 
took a step backward, still nervously gripping 
my staff. 

At that moment her eyes gazed into mine. 
Her face brightened. And for the first time in 
my life I saw her smile. 

“Boy! Boy!” she sobbed softly. “Thank 
you!” and she opened her bony arms as though 
to embrace me. 

With awakened horror and fear I shrank back. 
She stopped, her arms still outstretched. The 
40 


Son of Italy 

smile vanished from her face. And of a sudden 
she must have realized how hideous and repulsive 
she was—and of a sudden she must have realized 
what a twisted horror her life had been. 

As if felled by an invisible blow, she dropped 
on her face among the stones. And sobbing, fit¬ 
fully, terribly like a mother who had lost her 
child, she rolled from side to side. What thoughts 
must have filled her—what remorse—what horror 
at herself! 

I stepped back, hesitating. She still sobbed, 
rolling her emaciated body from side to side on 
the stony ground. Then, panic stricken, I turned. 
I beat my goats and sheep and they fled noisily 
down the mountain side. I ran after them seized 
with sudden fear. And I left the old hag up there 
on the bright mountain, sobbing in the calm 
golden sunlight. 

Down I went, down, into the village, trembling 
with an ever-growing fear. My mother wanted 
to know why I had returned so early. I told 
them. The women neighbors who had gathered 
around gasped. And for more than a week I was 
under close observation by the women to see if I 
showed any symptoms of illness or witchcraft. 

Now the autumn days began to dwindle and 
the pressure of duty lessened quickly for most of 
the year’s work had been accomplished. One 
day, the baby, after a long illness of pain, died. 
41 


Pascal D'Angelo 

The father said little except what had become a 
habit with him, 44 Why did she make the innocent 
suffer ?” 

Storms whirled through our valley. The upper 
mountains now glittered with frost in the early 
mornings. One day when looking out from my 
house I saw the rocky region where I had met the 
hag, a soft glistening white. Report had it that 
the inclement weather was slowly driving her 
downward toward the town. 

Meanwhile the father was swearing vengeance 
and wandering aimlessly around the town and on 
the highlands. 

One morning the witch was found badly beaten 
near a stream that passes through our town. She 
was in a very bad condition. She had a bag 
alongside her in which were found a few almost 
uneatable roots and other wild things. The flesh 
had been almost worn from her bony fingers, 
probably through digging for roots. 

She was still conscious when they found her. 
The chief of police asked her who had beaten her. 
She shook her head and they say that tears 
appeared in her dull eyes. 

The next night, while a glorious moon was 
flaring above the snowy heights, the reports 
slowly circulated that the vampire was dead. 

It was a strange night, weird, intriguing. It 
was perhaps such a night as I later attempted to 
42 


Son of Italy 

describe in a poem called “Fantasio” which 
afterwards appeared in “The Measure.” 

FANTASIO 

As Night like a black flower shuts the sun within its petals 
of gloom, 

The silent road crosses the sleeping valley like a winding 
dream— 

While the whole region has succumbed under the weight 
of a primeval silence. 

The mountains like mighty giants lift themselves with a 
regal haughtiness out of the ruling gloom. 

Across the dim jagged distances are pearl-gray wings 
flitting 
Flitting— 

The moonlight is a hailstorm of splendor 
Pattering on the velvet floor of gloom— 

The moon! 

The moon is a faint memory of a lost sun— 

The moon is a footprint that the Sun has left on pathless 
heaven! 

Pearl-gray wings are whirling distantly— 

Whirling! 

A fever of youth streams through my being 
Trembling under the incantation of Beauty, 

Like a turmoil of purple butterfly caught in a web of 
light. 

A black foam of darkness overflows from the rim of night, 
And floods awayjbe pearl-gray wings! 

43 


Chapter IV 


O ne evening, when I was fifteen, I found my 
mother crying softly but bitterly. As soon 
as I entered our hut she wiped her eyes and 
tried to assume a calm expression. To my re¬ 
peated questions she shook her head. I asked 
where my father was. She pointed out toward 
the fields. 

It was swiftly getting dark. A few dim lights 
began to show here and there in the village. And 
on the road before our house the richer peasants 
were returning on their slow donkeys through 
the vast gloom. My father had none, for we were 
far too poor to own any. 

Again I looked at my mother. She was leaning 
her arm on the narrow window sill with her chin 
between her fingers. Under her raven black hair, 
her face appeared pale in the dim glow of twi¬ 
light. Almost every body we knew had already 
passed on their way home. The bells rang 
distantly. 

I was alarmed, especially at her ominous silence 
for I knew that my mother was not a woman to 
show much visible signs of emotion. No woman 
who works harder than most men out in the fields 
44 


Son of Italy 

tilling the soil can do that. I had been helping a 
neighbor at harvest for two cents a day. She was 
here alone without either my father or my 
younger brother. 

Finally, I begged her almost in a sobbing voice 
to tell me what had happened. 

She turned. “Nothing,” she said, “I am just 
thinking.” 

“But where are they?” 

“There was a large spot of wheat that is too 
ripe and your father is trying to mow it all. 
Otherwise the strong winds that are blowing 
to-night may shake it to the ground. I came 
home to make supper. Do you want to eat now, 
or will you wait for them?” 

I was famished, but I decided to wait. The 
minutes passed very slowly. A thick moonless 
gloom had now completely enveloped our valley. 
Fitful whirls of wind were softly whistling here 
and there. Finally we heard footsteps. And 
after a few seconds, the door was flung open and 
my brother came running in followed by my tall 
father. 

I noticed that both he and my mother stared at 
each other coldly, almost as if enemies. I was 
wondering what could have come between them. 

My brother happened to go upstairs and I 
went up the steep ladder after him. In a low 
voice I asked him if he knew what was the 
45 


Pascal D'Angelo 

matter. He shook his head and said that he had 
not noticed anything wrong save one small inci¬ 
dent. That afternoon, while working in the 
merciless sun, all at once, in a fit of disgust, my 
father had thrown down his tools and had 
trudged to the other end of the field. My mother 
had walked after him and they had talked 
together for a long while in a low voice. After 
that my mother had come home. 

As we came down, I heard my father say in an 
earnest voice, “I cannot help it. Otherwise we 
will never get out of this quicksand.” 

They stopped talking as soon as they saw us. 
And we sat down to a silent meal of hot chicory 
and rice soup. Sleep soon overwhelms the tired 
peasant, and after a moody silence my father 
went up to bed. My brother followed. My 
mother and I remained behind. I stood for a few 
minutes looking at her. 

Then I begged her to please tell me what it was 
that oppressed her. 

She sighed deeply and whispered, “Your father 
has decided to go away.” 

Alarmed I exclaimed, “Where to?” 

“To America.” 

I felt a wild pain, for I dearly love my father. 
To America! I had heard much of that strange 
place into which people we knew had vanished 
and had never returned. Had never returned! 
46 


Son of Italy 

And my own father I After all, I was a young 
boy, and I could not keep back the tears. 

My mother put her arms around me and 
pressed her toil-marked face in my hair. And 
she kissed me, begging me not to cry. I looked 
up into her beautiful eyes and I was calmed. 

Sighing deeply, she murmured, “I cannot 
blame him. He works so hard. And we never 
seem to get any better. I must bend myself to 
what has to be.” 

Still I sobbed at the thought that my father 
would go away. But she, with a mother’s divine 
art, softly calmed me. And smiling into my 
eyes, she begged me to go to gentle dreams. So, 
slowly, together we went up the ladder into our 
unlit bedroom. 

Our people have to emigrate. It is a matter of 
too much boundless life and too little space. We 
feel tied up there. Every bit of cultivable soil is 
owned by those fortunate few who lord over us. 
Before spring comes into our valley all the obtain¬ 
able land is rented out or given to the peasants 
for a season under usurious conditions, namely, 
for three-fourths, one-half or one-fourth of the 
crops, the conditions depending upon the neces¬ 
sity either of the owner or of the peasant who is 
seeking land. Up to a few years ago some peas¬ 
ants had to take land even on the one-fifth basis; 
that is, the man who worked the land and bought 
47 


Pascal D'Angelo 

even seeds and manure would only get one-fifth 
of the harvest, while the owner who merely 
allowed him to use the land would receive four- 
fifths. This was possible up to a short while ago. 
But to-day such a thing is absolutely impossible 
since no peasant would agree to it unless his head 
were not functioning normally. And what is it 
that saves the man and keeps him from being 
ground under the hard power of necessity? The 
New World! 

Previously, there was no escape; but now 
there is. In the old days men from our highlands 
did go down into the marshes of Latium to har¬ 
vest and earn some extra money. And there 
they sickened with malaria and came back ghosts 
of their former selves. But now there was escape 
from the rich landowners, from the terrors of 
drought, from the spectre of starvation, in the 
boundless Americas out of which at times people 
returned with fabulous tales and thousands of 
liras—riches unheard of before among peasants. 

The year before, my father had been trying to 
better our conditions. He had hired two large 
pieces of arable ground on which he had toiled 
almost every minute of daylight during that 
whole season. Having no money to make the 
first payment on the land, he had to borrow some 
at a very high rate of interest. At the end of that 
season, after selling the crops, he found that he 
48 


Son of Italy 

had just barely enough money to pay the rest of 
the rent and to pay back the loan with the 
enormous interest. It is the landowners and the 
moneylenders who are the real vampires among 
us—not pitiable, demented old women. 

That season of excessive toil made my father 
much older. His tall strong body was beginning 
to bend. He had become a little clumsy and 
slower. And the results of his futile attempt 
made him moody and silent. He would sit on 
our door-step in the evenings and gaze out at the 
living darkness of our valley. At times, when 
one talked to him he would answer very absently 
as if his thoughts were far away. 

And finally, the inevitable decision came into 
his mind and he was not to be moved from it. 

The next morning I noticed several times that 
my mother was gazing anxiously after me as I 
set about getting ready for my day’s work. She 
seemed gentler than usual as if she were trying, 
as much as she could, to make me happy and 
satisfied. I went to my work where I did not 
have time to do any thinking. 

When I returned I noticed that she scanned 
my face with a timid anxiety. Once I called her 
to ask her a question and she stopped short and 
turned white. 

And so it was that day after day my mother 
strove piteously, frantically to make me con- 
49 


Pascal D'Angelo 

tented and satisfied. She knew how much I 
loved my father, and her mother’s fears foretold 
what actually came to pass even before I thought 
about it. 

At first I felt boyishly angry against this 
America which was stealing my father from me. 
Then I became boyishly curious. In the eve¬ 
nings my mother had been smiling so much and 
had made many wonderful promises of the new 
happy life we would lead when my father re¬ 
turned from America laden with riches. I began 
to think that this new land was quite a desirable 
place. She would tell me how we would have a 
house which I always desired, and two pigs, and 
how our neighbors would all respect us, and the 
“signori” in the town would even deign to talk 
to us sometimes. The result of all this was to 
make me more and more curious about a land 
which could confer such blessings. 

With everything in her power my poor mother 
tried to keep the idea of going away from my 
mind. But it was inevitable. One day, I hardly 
know how, I began to think that I would go with 
my father. Surely I could earn as much as he 
in the new land, for I was as big and as strong as 
any fully developed man. And our blessing 
would be double if I went, or else we would 
return in half the time and all be together again. 

My mother noticed the change in me. She 

50 


Son of Italy 

knew my decision as soon as I came in, for her 
eyes became alarmed. I felt a wild pity and 
sorrow, for young as I was I realized how she 
must have felt at seeing her little family break 
away from her. 

As we sat down for supper my father remarked 
to her, “What has happened—are you sick?” 

She shook her head and bravely tried to smile. 
Her timid kindness to me at the table that night 
almost killed me. I could hardly contain myself 
any more. But fortunately our poor, scanty 
supper did not last long. 

Slowly my father trudged up the ladder. I 
heard his heavy, tired footsteps as he walked 
around getting ready to go to sleep. It was a 
soft mellow night. Dazed with conflicting 
thoughts I walked out to the steps and sat down 
wearily. Without a word, my mother came and 
sat at my side. We did not look at each other. 
For a long while we sat there staring at the purple 
valley before us. 

Softly, hesitating, my mother whispered my 
name. I turned my face to her. Her eyes were 
gazing at me in sorrow and love. Her lips moved 
tremulously. But not a sound came forth from 
them. I realized that I had never been away 
from her love even one night. 

As we gazed at one another her voice came in a 
soft despair, “You too—want to go away.” 

51 


Pascal D'Angelo 

I did not answer. I bowed my head lower and 
lower. 

Sobbing, she threw her arms about me and 
pressed me to her breast. In the darkness of her 
tight embrace, eyes closed, I wept. We both 
wept there on the steps. She kissed my lips 
again and again. Her warm tears fell on my face. 
I was sobbing, “I will return soon, we will 
return soon.” But no. Her mother’s fears fore¬ 
told the truth. I never returned. Again she 
embraced me, as she did when she would cradle 
me to sleep on her breast. Again she kissed me. 
And so we remained for a long, long while until a 
tranquil peace came upon us. 

“Children are like birds after big strong wings 
have grown and enabled them to fly, very seldom 
they think of returning back home to the mother’s 
bough. I know I I know!” 


52 


Chapter V 


uickly we set about making plans for 



leaving. My father had wished to take me 


along even before my decision, but hated to 
separate me from my mother, though he thought 
of me all the time. Nor did he oppose my desire 
to accompany him. 

My mother, soon resigned, began to make us 
various pairs of socks, both of cotton and of wool 
shorn from our neighbor’s lambs. Another man 
in the hamlet had also decided to go. He 
had been married for about two years and had 
great ambitions and little money. As the first 
move he went to town and bought himself a sub¬ 
stantial valise. 

His wife was a very beautiful woman with a 
temper rather stronger than the average. With 
multitudinous tears she steadily refused to do 
anything for her husband, hoping to hold him 
back by her unpreparedness. But he had decided 
and tears and spite were of no avail. Realizing 
this she began later on, with a quicker pace, to 
prepare all the articles he might need. 

We heard of many others in the town who were 
leaving. Some of them had rich “compari” and 


53 


Pascal D'Angelo 

relatives. Dinners were being given in their 
honor before their departure. As for us, we were 
growing more and more eager each day. There 
was still work for us; we toiled up to the last day 
of our departure, just as we resumed work the 
second day after our arrival in America. 

With a few others in our town, my father 
arranged to go to work in America for a foreman 
on the state roads who was a fellow-townsman. 

Many times the wives would get together 
mournfully and talk of the parting. Doubt 
gnawed at their hearts, for instances were well 
known of husbands who had gone away and had 
never returned, or whose letters had suddenly 
stopped. Accidents, perhaps death, perhaps a 
new-grown indifference were the not infrequent 
causes of such breaks. 

All that winter my mother toiled incessantly 
to mend our clothes and weave new things for us. 
But we were very poor and she found it hard to 
get any material. Nevertheless she worked on 
and did the best she could. 

The parting day came. It was Wednesday. 
All our relatives made it a holiday and we had a 
substantial dinner—a dinner as good as when my 
parents got married, they all agreed. We were 
dressed in our finest and our little hut was well 
cleaned. The neighbors had all come around to 
scan us curiously, as though they had not seen 
54 


Son of Italy 

us for so many years. We all smiled, my mother 
most of all. And then the parting. 

We walked slowly toward the station. One of 
our relatives tried to make a witty remark. We 
felt light-hearted. Then, of a sudden, an over¬ 
whelming sense of horror and pain possessed me 
as I thought that I was leaving my mother. 

“God bless you,” she was saying, trying her 
best to smile through the tears that trickled down 
her cheeks. 

I sobbed. 

The others who were sailing on the same ship 
left at the same time, and the scene at the station 
was one of undescribable confusion, lamentation 
and exclamation. 

Up rumbled the train which traveled without 
any horses or mules. I felt my father urging me 
aboard. A last kiss from my mother. Every¬ 
thing was obscured by a mist of tears. We were 
going into the unknown. Had our feet been 
carrying us we would have instinctively turned 
toward home. 

But the train sped along. 

It was the first time in my life I had been on a 
train, and it was a remarkable experience. The 
first tunnel we rumbled into, with its sudden 
blotting of all light, nearly frightened me to death 
and made me stop sobbing. Out we flashed. 
The whole world seemed moving around. Hills 
55 


Pascal D'Angelo 

and mountains were moulding and curving toward 
us, their white villages growing and then gradu¬ 
ally fading off into their green indistinct folds. 

Finally I saw a thrilling sight. We had just 
come out of a tunnel and were speeding at a high, 
rare altitude toward the plains of Campania. 
Sparkling and flashing in the distance and spread¬ 
ing right across the world was something all in 
motion. At first I was frightened. Then I 
thought, “The sea! That must be what they 
call the sea!” 

And it was. We sped into Naples. 

Here it was a continuous startling whirl. 
Everything had been arranged for us in advance 
by the agent for the steamship company. We 
were taken to a lodging house to await the ship’s 
departure. 

On first reaching the place we were subjected 
to a physical examination. They made sure that 
our teeth and eyes were in proper shape, but were 
not so eager about our purses. Three times these 
examinations were repeated, until the fourth day 
after our arrival in Naples when the steamship 
“Cedric” left port. 

The hour approached. With all our baggage 
we stood on fine awaiting our turn to go aboard. 
It was with a quailing heart and a sense of great 
misgiving that I stepped on the immense steel 
vessel. For I entertained great doubts as to 
56 


Son of Italy 

whether the whole affair could stay afloat for 
many days. It being rather late when we got on 
board, we ate a little and went down to our sleep¬ 
ing quarters. 

That night we slept below in our iron berths. 
A man nearby remarked, “We must be already 
past Sardinia.” 

“Good heavens! How far!” exclaimed another. 

I thought, “ Good heavens! How far—that we 
have so easily passed Sardinia—whatever it 
may be!” 

I remember as in a dream the flashing seas 
around Gibraltar and the vendors of oranges who 
came alongside the ship in their little boats. 

The voyage was a nightmare, interposed with 
moments of strange brilliance. We passed the 
Azores which looked like toy islands with toy 
houses and windmills. No sooner had they van¬ 
ished under the horizon than a tremendous storm 
rolled into us. We were locked under deck and 
our fate was placed in the hands of others. 

I must confess that I was terrified, as were 
most of my fellow-travelers in the steerage. We 
felt our own helplessness. The ship swayed 
incessantly. At dinner plates of undesired soup 
would rise or slide in a most spiteful manner, 
perhaps ending their peregrinations on our laps. 
To tell the truth we were not much oppressed by 
hunger during that terrible storm. Outside, the 
57 


Pascal D'Angelo 

end of the world might have come for all that we 
could conceive of the tremendous wrath of the 
elements as the angry waters poured across the 
portholes. 

One man in a wild anxiety, perhaps anxious to 
see if there was any way of escape, unbolted a 
port hole and looked out. Immediately a shining 
flood of water poured in. Two sailors came run¬ 
ning up cursing angrily. The man blinked and 
remonstrated with them. They shouted. He 
pulled out a knife. Others came to pull them 
apart. And the noisy waves outside added to the 
hullabaloo. 

During a comparative calm we were allowed 
to stagger out on deck. Then came one of our 
innocent sports: namely, looking at the fishes. 

Some would cry, “See the fishes 1” 

“Where? Where?” And we would all rush to 
the side to stare down in amusement at the 
playful antics of shining porpoises that swam 
alongside the vessel. They would follow us for 
immense distances and for many hours we would 
forget our terrors of the vast ocean in gazing 
down at the beautiful creatures. 

It was a foggy day when we finally approached 
New York Harbor, too late to enter. For hours 
out we had seen small boats with white sails, 
and finally we beheld a twilight strip of shore 
which gradually vanished under a curtain of 
58 


Son of Italy 

mist and darkness. Still it was land—it was 
America! The terrors which the boundless mid¬ 
ocean had waked in us soon vanished and left us 
in easeful relief. We strolled happily along the 
deck. Some of those who had been here before 
were unsuccessful in trying to point out Coney 
Island to us. 

Below all was confusion and noise. Everyone 
was talking at once. Gradually, however, a 
silence came over some of us. There was a 
hideous doubt in our minds. No one was sure 
either of entering America or being sent back as 
undesirable—which would mean a ruined life. 
For many of us had come on loaned money 
whose interest alone we would barely be able to 
pay when we got back. 

We went to Ellis Island where we were in¬ 
spected and examined. I really did not find 
any of the bad treatment and manhandling that 
some tender-skinned immigrants complain about. 
Anyhow, on the 20th of April, 1910, I and my 
father with a crowd of our fellow townsmen 
were allowed to land in America! 

Mario Lancia, our new foreman, met us at the 
Battery. He shook hands with all of us and 
remarked on my having grown into a broad, 
husky lad. I grinned and turned startled at the 
sight of an elevated train dashing around the 
curve towards South Ferry. To my surprise, 
59 


Pascal D'Angelo 

not even one car fell. Nor did the people walking 
beneath scurry away at its approach as I would 
have done. 

Chattering happily, we started to cross a broad 
street. All at once there was a terrific crash 
overhead, a car clanged before us, two automo¬ 
biles whirled around. Another car was bearing 
down on our group. 

“Here’s the car,” said the foreman and then, 
smiling, explained the roar to me. “It’s only 
the train over us.” 

I felt as if those unseen wheels above were 
grinding paths through my own body. The car 
came up and stopped without knocking any one 
of us down as we stood awkwardly in its way 
with our multicolored bundles. 

We climbed into a strange vision. The mar¬ 
velous foreman spoke some words in an unknown 
language to a uniformed man who received 
money. And the uniformed person looked sneer- 
ingly at the wonderful foreman. 

We sat down. A most inconceivable vision 
was flashing past the car window. As we traveled 
on, and my dazed eyes became accustomed to the 
place I began to look around. A matronly lady 
sitting opposite was scanning me with a sort of 
pitying gaze. I wondered whether I should get 
up and bow to her. Then I noticed that right 
next to the lady sat a father and son. Upright 
60 


Son of Italy 

and straight, they were both glaring at a news¬ 
paper which the father held. With compassion, 
I observed that they were both afflicted with 
some nervous disease, for their mouths were in 
continuous motion, like cows chewing cud. “Too 
bad,” I thought, “that both father and son 
should be afflicted in the same way!” 

The foreman was anxious, pulling out a watch 
continually and saying that we had barely time 
to catch a train for our final destination. So we 
were not to live in this remarkable place! And 
now, just before we reached the station, I began 
to notice that there were signs at the corners 
of the streets with “Ave.! Ave.! Ave.!” How 
religious a place this must be that expresses its 
devotion at every crossing, I mused. Still, they 
did not put the “Ave.” before the holy word, 
as, in “Ave Maria,” but rather after. How 
topsy-turvy! 

What confusion greeted us at the station! We 
hurried through a vast turning crowd and dashed 
down toward a train. Almost before realizing 
it, we were speeding toward our destination, 
Hillsdale, where work was ready for us on the 
state road. I was overwhelmed, but pleased. 


61 


Chapter VI 


And this was America, I thought. During our 
way over on the ship I had seen golden 
heaps of clouds and rainbow vistas toward 
which we sped, and I had come to believe that 
they were perhaps the portals of America. 

But this place was out in a forest, a soft mur¬ 
muring woodland of enormous trees, straight and 
majestic. In our country large forests are a 
rarity. And trees were practically all planted 
by the hands of man. But these giant trees were 
monuments. And as the sunlight poured through 
them I felt small and helpless—almost lost. 

We went down a coiling mud-road on a truck 
which had met us at the station. And after a 
long ride through the woods we came out upon a 
clearing in the center of which was a small, 
smoky wooden shack. That was to be our home. 
We jumped down. A man came to the door. I 
had heard of him. There several other men, all 
fellow-townsmen, who were waiting for our ar¬ 
rival to complete the new gang. 

It was getting dark in the forest. A golden 
twilight poured over the trees. Some birds 
chirped in an ugly voice. 

62 


Son of Italy 

Inside the shack we were setting our things in 
order. Someone played on a mandolin. My 
father at the threshold was admiring the tall 
straight trees. And finally, we sat down around 
a long table in the glow of a kerosene lamp 
while one of the men served us with delicious 
soup. 

And there we all were, at the beginning of our 
long years of toil together in America. In this 
country immigrants of the same town stick 
together like a swarm of bees from the same 
hive, and work wherever the foreman or “boss” 
finds a job for the gang. And we who had been 
thrown together almost by chance became like 
one family, until a few years later when death 
and troubles finally separated us. 

Our original gang was of the family type— 
all quiet, hard-working men. We had known 
one another more or less in Introdacqua. But 
by the time we were settled in Hillsdale we were 
like very close relatives. 

There was Matteo Rossi, a man of reasonable 
and pleasant character who always tried to 
avoid trouble, though I have seen few men who 
could compare with him in strength. A lack 
of necessary eloquence made him a dumb and 
almost inactive member of the gang. In the 
evenings, he would sit in a corner and listen 
to our foolish jests. So we called him, “the ace 
63 


Pascal D'Angelo 

of hearts,” a card which in one of our provincial 
games does very little. I believe he thought of 
his one little son all the time. 

Giovanni Ferraro was a hilarious bachelor, 
just about entering his thirties. He was always 
talking about having to get married, and would 
eagerly listen when the men with families re¬ 
counted their experiences. Perhaps he was 
anxious to learn something. He was a handsome 
man, almost blond, and somewhat slender com¬ 
pared to the rest of the gang. I believe he is 
still single. 

Giorgio Yanno was a short elderly man of 
forty-five. He was almost as broad as he was 
high, and his arms and hands were enormous. 
He had clever brown eyes and was the champion 
talker of the gang. Sometimes the rest of us 
would launch a verbal attack upon him, and he 
all alone, would defend himself and probably de¬ 
feat the whole crowd of us with his clever repartee. 

Giacomo Gallina was not a very ready-fisted 
man, but somehow it never took him long to get 
into trouble. I never saw him in action, be¬ 
cause he didn’t stay long with us, but I did see 
some forlorn fellows on whom he had used his 
fists. He would have become a Dempsey, no 
doubt, with a little training, for he was one of 
the most perfectly built men I have ever seen. 
The only one among us who could compare with 
64 


Son of Italy 

him was Andrea Lenta, who was called the giant 
of Introdacqua. 

Andrea, six feet and a few more inches in 
height, was a dusky faced man, slow but power¬ 
ful in his movements. He had a broad, hairy 
chest and unusually strong muscles. He be¬ 
lieved—whether in jest or not, I am uncertain— 
that the world should be governed by individual 
strength. There should be no recourse to weap¬ 
ons or to courts. Of course, such a system would 
have made him one of the leaders of humanity. 
He was also the best educated among us, for 
he had married the daughter of one of the small 
tradesmen in our town, and she had taught him 
many things. He was always talking about 
Conradino, who was taken in a battle near 
Popoli, in our valley—whoever he was. 

There was also Antonio Lancia with a sten¬ 
torian voice. And if by any luck he could train 
it, no wireless apparatus would be necessary for 
the people on this globe when he would sing. 
The foreman, Mario Lancia, who was related to 
him, was very quiet and invariably kind. He 
was about forty years of age, and had passed 
almost half of his life in America. He could read 
and write some English, and was the guiding 
spirit of the gang. 

Besides my father and me, there was another 
younger lad, Filippo, who was Matteo’s nephew. 
65 


Pascal D'Angelo 

I knew him well, for his father owned a piece of 
land near my home. I remember how, when 
little boys, we used to play together with almonds 
and walnuts during the autumnal spare time 
when there was no school and no sheep or goats 
to take care of. His uncle, Matteo, had charge 
of the young fellow in this strange country, and 
was saving up for him what money he earned, 
at first. 

That night we were restless and anxious. Our 
beds were worse than at home—just a few 
boards nailed together. The shack did not 
smell quite right either. Yet it was by far 
cleaner than many other shanties, in which I 
lived later on in America. 

Early the next morning as the first fight was 
pouring through the trees, we arose almost in a 
body. Everyone was talking. The foreman 
was showing one of them something. And I 
made my first acquaintance with the pick and 
shovel. 

After a hasty breakfast we went out. A 
truck was in front of the shack. Another came 
lumbering up in back of it. The foreman shouted 
to the driver. “Come on!” “Yes—this one— 
no that one!” Confusion and endless talk as 
we all piled into the trucks. 

Birds were still singing around with none too 
melodious voices. The morning air among the 
66 


Son of Italy 

trees was fresh and sweet. Finally we got out 
upon the state road where we were to work. 
Some more gangs were already there. A few 
trucks filled with men came from another direc¬ 
tion. We jumped down. A whistle blew 
harshly. 

And we set to digging and handling our picks 
and shovels. And I have been handling them 
ever since. 

We were digging a way through a hillock. 
The trucks came up, and we quickly filled them. 
Ahead some men were blasting a large outcrop¬ 
ping rock. Each truck was quickly filled; 
another one came up; the driver jumped down. 
Eagerly, overflowing with newborn enthusiasm 
in this new bright land, we worked. Several of 
us, with Andrea and Giacomo looming among 
them, were attacking the brown hillside. 

A group of men came past shouting in a strange 
language. That was probably the American 
language, which I had heard on my arrival in 
New York. A fight started up. Two men were 
pummeling each other. There were shouts, and 
their foreman rushed toward them white-faced 
with anger. 

That noon we were pretty well tired and lay 
in the grateful shadow of some tall trees whose 
roots our excavation was exposing. One of the 
men who had been in America a few years came 
67 


Pascal D'Angelo 

around with a couple of enormous pea pods— 
that is, I thought they were pea pods. But he 
stripped off the skin and giving us each a small 
piece of the pulpy center urged us to eat it. It 
was sweet and we were well pleased. He told 
us that they were called bananas. The name 
was easy to pronounce. 

As we were about to resume our work, the 
foreman came up and began to talk to my father. 
After a few minutes they called me over. 

“I want you to be water boy for a few days,” 
said the foreman gravely. 

I looked at my father. He nodded, so I 
nodded too. 

The foreman showed me what to do, which 
was to bring pails of water to the men who 
worked and drank like truck horses. Filippo 
was already water boy, but as the gang was 
large I had to help him out until they got 
another lad. I was not at all insulted, even 
though I was as big and as strong as most of 
the men there. In fact, I enjoyed my easier 
duties. 

I was at first much fascinated by the way they 
dumped sand and gravel from the trucks. A 
truck would come creaking up, filled with a 
mound of brown gravel. Right over the spot 
where the gravel was to be put, the truck would 
stop. Then the driver would step on something 
68 


Son of Italy 

which I afterwards found out was a spring. The 
bottom of the truck would open outward like a 
double door. The driver shouted to his horses 
and the truck lumbered away with its flapping 
bottom while the gravel was neatly deposited 
in a big mound. This seemed to me to be the 
very height of cleverness. Nor did I suspect at 
the time how soon I was to experience the full 
cleverness of the contrivance. 

That night we were going home, piled in the 
trucks. Fresh was the breeze and calm the 
countryside. Slowly we entered into the great 
looming forest. We were all very fatigued from 
our long hours, ten of labor and one of lunch, 
making eleven in all. I was listening to the 
droning sounds of the crickets. A few of the 
men were joking; the others, their red faces 
shining with sweat, were leaning around in the 
truck. The second truck with four others and 
the foreman followed. 

Something happened, and all of a sudden the 
bottom seemed to have fallen out of creation, 
and with an unpleasant thud we hit the hard 
ground, surprised and startled, while the truck 
slowly moved over us. For a moment we lay 
there between the wheels gaping as they passed 
off. Then we began to shout, yell and curse. 
Giacomo, who was one of those dumped so un¬ 
ceremoniously out of his restful reveries, jumped 
69 


Pascal D'Angefo 

to his feet wild with anger. Cursing, he leaped 
toward the truck driver. My father and the 
foreman held him back. Another one who fell 
also sought to soothe his wounded feelings by 
wounding the driver. The poor fellow had 
jumped down from his seat, and nervously 
gripping his whip, was endeavoring to explain 
that it was an accident—how springs sometimes 
came loose of themselves. Well, since nothing 
worse than a few bruises had come out of the 
accident, we were appeased, and climbed in 
again, a little suspicious of the tricky, diabolic 
contraption. And so the first days passed. 

None of us, including myself, ever thought of 
a movement to broaden our knowledge of the 
English language. We soon learned a few words 
about the job, that was the preliminary creed; 
then came “bread,” “shirt,” “gloves” (not kid 
gloves), “milk.” And that is all. We formed 
our own little world—one of many in this 
country. And the other people around us who 
spoke in strange languages might have been 
phantoms for all the influence that they had upon 
us or for all we cared about them. 

Being water boy with the gang, I did the 
errands. One of my first jobs in America was 
to go to the village store about a mile away and 
buy a dozen eggs. The foreman repeated the 
word, “aches,” several times to me so that I 
70 


Son of Italy 

could memorize it. And I hurried down the 
road repeating the word to myself, so as not to 
forget it. But my debut in English was some¬ 
what unsuccessful, for by the time I got to the 
grocery I had changed it to “axe,” and with 
my fingers I counted twelve. 

Immediately the grocer, an old Polack, who 
didn’t understand much English himself, brought 
me a dozen axes. I turned up my nose and 
shook my head. Then we began to use all the 
English we knew, which was quite negative as 
far as I was concerned. And finally, after a 
harmless and incomprehensible wrangling I made 
him understand that I was not a wood chopper; 
and that I hadn’t come there with the slightest 
idea of buying his axes, even though he was 
insisting on showing me how fine they were, 
running his finger along the blade and nodding. 

Then his wife came out into the dim store. 
She was fat, greasy and ugly, and understood 
less than her husband. Well, after they had 
shown me all sorts of objects, I began to illus¬ 
trate my wish a little better and began to cackle 
like a hen. At first the wife appeared shocked. 
Then I made the sign of an oval with my fingers, 
at which they understood and brought out the 
eggs. And I went home in triumph. 

Another little catastrophe happened during 
these early months when I was learning and 
71 


Pascal D'Angelo 

misusing a few words of English. This occurred 
near Poughkeepsie, where we were not enjoying 
our first winter of American sleet and snow. It 
was January, the ground was thick with ice, and 
I was feeling angry. Filippo also felt angry. So 
we had a fight. 

And after punching wildly, slipping and wres¬ 
tling, we were both pretty well damaged, when 
my father and Giovanni, the bachelor, pulled us 
apart. To my mortification, I found that I had 
a hideous blue lump under my left eye. Now I 
have always been peaceful, even when young and 
have always looked upon violence as an evil 
thing. I had been striking up acquaintances 
with some of the people in the village and I was 
very much ashamed to let them see that I 
had been fighting. Therefore, after much sol¬ 
emn meditation, I decided to tell everybody that 
I had fallen down. 

First I asked the foreman what the English 
for falling down was. He told me, “faw don.” 

I began to repeat to myself, “faw don, faw 
don, faw don. ...” It was evening and I 
was picking my way down the icy road toward 
the town. Right outside the first houses two 
American fellows were quarrelling, and I paused 
to watch and listen. One of them was shaking 
his fist under the other man’s nose and saying, 
“You damn!” 


72 


Son of Italy 

Somehow I forgot “ faw don” and as I walked 
away I was repeating “You damn! You damn!” 
. . . unconscious of the change. 

The first man I met was an American brake- 
man, who wore a collar on Sunday and whose 
acquaintance I esteemed greatly. 

He greeted me, “Hello, Pat!” Everybody 
called me Pat. “What’s happened to you?” 

“Me?” And I assumed an expression of sad 
innocence. “Me? You damn!” and I pointed 
to the ground. 

“What?” he exclaimed. 

“Yes,” I repeated in a louder voice,” “you 
damn! You damn!” 

He laughed, said something and walked on, 
leaving me a little offended and grieved at his 
lack of sympathy. 

The same thing happened when I met a 
young lady who worked in the yard office. And 
all around the place I went repeating my sad 
tale of “You damn!” When finally one man 
made me understand what I had been saying, 
I was so ashamed that I hurried straight home. 
And on the way I met Filippo, also angry, and 
we had another fight. 

Our first four years in America were a monot¬ 
onous repetition of laborious days. Everywhere 
was toil, yet they were happy years, for the 
foreman was kind and work was not so scarce; 
73 


Pascal D'Angelo 

and monotony does not hurt when people are 
satisfied. While things seemed to be going so 
well some trouble that developed in our fore¬ 
man’s family caused him to leave hurriedly for 
Italy late in 1913. Still our gang kept together 
for one more year until the incidents came that 
finally separated us. 

Everywhere was toil—endless, continuous 
toil, in the flooding blaze of the sun, or in the 
slashing rain—toil. In Hillsdale, Poughkeepsie, 
Spring Valley, New York, Falling Water, Vir¬ 
ginia, Westwood, Remsey, New Jersey, Williams¬ 
port, Maryland, where the winding Potomac 
flows, Utica, New York, White Lake Corner, 
Otterlake, Tappan, Statsburg, Oneanta, Glen 
Falls, and many other places where we could 
find work, always as a pick and shovel man— 
that’s what I was able to do, and that is what 
I work at even now. 

Who hears the thuds of the pick and the 
jingling of the shovel? Only the stern-eyed 
foreman sees me. When night comes and we all 
quit work the thuds of the pick and the jingling 
of the shovel are heard no more. All my works 
are lost, lost forever. But if I write a good fine 
of poetry—then when the night comes and I 
cease writing, my work is not lost. My line is 
still there. It can be read by you to-day and by 
another to-morrow. But my pick and shovel 
74 


Son of Italy 

works cannot be read either by you to-day or 
by any one else to-morrow. If I bring you to all 
the above mentioned places you will never be 
able to understand all the work I was compelled 
to do, while I labored there. You cannot feel 
from the cold roads and steel tracks all the pains, 
the heart aches and the anger I felt at the bru¬ 
tality of enforced labor. Yet we had to live. 
We laborers have to live. We sell our lives, 
our youth, our health—and what do we get for 
it? A meager living. 

NIGHT SCENE 

An unshaped blackness is massed on the broken rim of 
night. 

A mountain of clouds rises like a Mammoth out of the 
walls of darkness 

With its lofty tusks battering the breast of heaven. 

And the horn of the moon glimmers distantly over the 
flares and clustered stacks of the foundry. 

Uninterruptedly, a form is advancing 
On the road that shows in tatters. 

The unshaped blackness is rolling larger above the thronged 
flames that branch upward from the stacks with an 
interwreathed fury. 

The form strolling on the solitary road 
Begins to assume the size of a human being. 

It may be some worker that returns from next town, 
Where it has been earning its day’s wages. 

75 


Pascal D'Angelo 

Slowly, tediously, it flags past me— 

It is a tired man muttering angrily. 

He mutters. 

The blackness of his form now expands its hungry chaos 
Spreading over half of heaven, like a storm, 

Ready to swallow the moon, the puffing stacks, the wild 
foundry, 

The very earth in its dark, furious maw, 

The man mutters, shambling on— 

The storm 1 The storm! 


76 


Chapter VII 


M y first real view of New York, the first 
time I actually realized the city, came in 
the summer of 1914 when I first visited 
Shady Side. Our job in Tuckahoe, New York, 
had stopped and I had come as a sort of advance 
agent for the gang in search of work. I came to 
the house of a couple of fellow townsmen. They 
boarded with some other Abruzzese in a shack 
perched on a high part of the Palisades. 

I reached there Friday night. And when Sat¬ 
urday came one of my friends, Saverio, a very 
experienced man, took me and his companion to 
see the sights. “You cannot know the great 
city—not until I show you what it really is,” he 
boasted. This was true, for on my first arrival 
in America I had hurried through New York as 
through some wild vision. And the immense 
powerful city had made little impression upon 
me. I have seen more gigantic and wonderful 
things in my dreams. 

I had also lived for a few weeks in a cheap 
boarding house on Bayard Street with the gang 
when our job at Sparkshill, New York, was 
77 


Pascal D'Angelo 

finished. But I was green then and my mind was 
yet unable to gather any impressions of the city, 
save that it was big, noisy and unintelligible. A 
dog whose eyes see a wonderful sunset, I sup¬ 
pose, feels about as much as I did at that 
time. 

But a year made a good deal of difference and 
it was with a broadened vision that I came to 
Shady Side. 

Saverio’s companion was called Federico, a 
bronze-faced lad who had conceived a quick 
friendship for me in the short time I had been 
there. Dressed in our best, and looking rather 
handsome, in our estimation, we left the noisy 
house and climbed carefully down the face of the 
precipice on a narrow coiling footpath that leads 
into Gorge Road. 

Gorge Road comes pouring like a stream from 
the cliffs and joins River Road. Dirty shacks 
and hovels are everywhere at the foot of the 
Palisades. On tiny terraces are barn-like houses 
clinging to the bare, stony slope, one above the 
other, filled hive-like with people talking, people 
arguing, people smoking and eating, singing and 
strumming guitars. 

Slowly the last light drew from the strip of sky 
that glimmered between the cliffs of the Palisades 
and the looming masses of factories along the 
black river. Men and women, dirty, speaking 
78 


Son of Italy 

a mixed jargon of Italian, Polish, Hungarian, 
English, were hurrying all about. Two husky 
laborers were appearing from the gloom of a 
factory door. One old Italian with golden rings 
in his ears was prodding some goats upward to¬ 
ward the terraced shacks. Children played 
everywhere. 

“Saverio, my friend, you can’t refuse a drink 
with us!” a voice came from a small shed-like 
house up above whose four windows glowed red 
with a new lamplight. Someone was atrociously 
playing a mandolin. 

The three of us stopped. 

Saverio excused himself. We had to go to 
New York. We were sorry with many thanks. 
And leisurely we began to saunter on through 
Shady Side to the ferry at Edgewater. 

: Shady Side is merely a factory town. It has 
nothing but factories and workingmen’s shacks. 
How many of them are to be found all over the 
country! Towns of filthy hovels, towns of con¬ 
gested quarters and unhealthy conditions, all of 
them, little miniature East Sides and Mulberry 
Bends, scattered among the green stretches and 
broad open spaces of America. And over each of 
them, feeding upon them, looms the ever-present 
factory or mill. According to the higher con¬ 
cepts of life, these people seem to just barely 
live. But I know that they are no more un- 
79 


Pascal D'Angelo 

happy than the nervous men and women whose 
lives consist of hurrying daily to and from gray 
apartment houses to gray offices. When I was in 
the darkness of ignorance, among them, a 
laborer and nothing else, I was happy. 

In the gloom, now, the windows began to 
glimmer around us; the muddy road appeared 
soft and misty, the fumes that coiled down from 
the factories became ghost-like. A couple of 
drunkards staggered past and went tumbling 
into a saloon. It seemed as if each house on 
River Road had a saloon on the ground floor. 
And gambling and drinking were starting up, it 
being Saturday night. 

“Look, here’a an American girl who fell in 
love with our foreman and tried to have him 
arrested! Ha! Ha!” Coldly a flaming haired 
woman of questionable appearance and decor¬ 
ations passed us. I suppose she couldn’t under¬ 
stand Italian—at least not our dialect. But she 
must have felt the “Ha! Ha!” deep in her 
heart. 

Sauntering ahead we left behind the noisy 
teeming shacks of Shady Side and entered upon a 
long, dark, factory-haunted stretch of road that 
leads to Edgewater. 

Saverio became critical, “This is a peculiar 
country. I can never understand these people 
in America and their cold ways. They will go 
80 


Son of Italy 

to the funeral of their best friend and keep a 
straight face. I believe they feel ashamed if in a 
moment of forgetfulness they’ve turned to look 
at a flower or a beautiful sunset. Some of them 
talk good English, I believe.” 

But I was gazing about, pleased at the sky, the 
moon, the factories and the great illumined city 
beyond the river, which I remembered like a 
vague dream. 

We reached the ferry house. Automobiles 
were swirling all about. Just barely dodging 
one we got on the boat. And soon, excited in 
expectation, I was gliding toward the city that 
appeared to be spreading nearer and nearer to 
us, gigantically. 

Walking up a street that I afterwards found 
out was called Manhattan Street, we finally 
came upon a brilliantly illumined thoroughfare. 
I could hardly believe my eyes, it was so wonder¬ 
ful at first; and Federico too was gazing around 
delighted. But Saverio, the Americanized, as¬ 
sumed a cold impersonal attitude. 

We paused in front of a jewelry store. I 
noticed that some well dressed ladies were dis¬ 
gusted at our appearance and moved away 
quickly. 

“Forty-nine cents for these watch chains,” 
observed Saverio. 

“How abundant and cheap is even gold in this 
81 


Pascal D'Angelo 

wonderful place,” I thought. Long and dreamily 
we gazed over the display of splendor. Finally 
as we moved away, Federico said, “I once 
bought one of my girls a fine gold bracelet. The 
only trouble was it began to rust after a few 
weeks and made a blue ring on her arm.” We 
both sympathized with him, Saverio in a sar¬ 
donic way. 

We paused in front of another window. 
Again people edged away from us. And I 
heard some slurring remarks about “those 
foreigners.” 

“Look at this!” whispered Saverio. 

Down the street came one of those women 
whose hideousness and folly no thickness of 
paint can hide. She had glaring yellow hair, 
hard irregular features, double chin, gray eyes 
and blood-red lips. With silks, plumes, furs, and 
other portions of slaughtered animals, she was 
the very incarnation of mankind’s brutal vanity. 
Yet not one turned in disgust from this dazzling 
creature as they did from us. 

Federico observed, “She looks like the demon 
himself.” 

I thought she must be a lady of the aristocracy 
and told them so, at which both laughed. The 
over-adorned lady floated past with a sickening 
aroma of perfume. And we three walked happily 
along. 


82 


Son of Italy 

Right before us was that broad view more 
wonderful than anything I had ever seen. It 
was almost as wonderful as when a few years 
afterwards, from a train on Manhattan Bridge, 
I saw Brooklyn Bridge hanging over the river 
with nothing to hold it up in the middle. 

To me this thoroughfare was a magic vista. 
Men and women crowded continuously out of 
that dazzling distance. Where did they all 
come from? And why their silence? Who had 
cast the spell over them all? How pale they all 
were, I thought. Weakly pale they all seemed, 
like sprouts of seeds washed up by the rain. 
Cars clanged and rumbled past, filled with rows 
of statue-like people who sat within, motionless, 
ignoring one another. 

Nobody nodded good evening to me or to my 
companions. 

We hovered outside a crowd, all looking at 
shoes. Then we passed on to a florist’s store 
where there was a glorious display. It seemed as 
if these cold people made it a silly point of honor 
not to stop or glance at an array of lovely things 
like flowers. Not a man in the crowd had put a 
twig of sweet basil over his left ear as the men— 
real men— of our town do on summer evenings. 
However, a snickering young fellow and an 
insipid blond girl came to cuddle together and 
coo over the floral display. So I may have been 
83 


Pascal D'Angelo 

wrong after all; for love, like death and night 
is a great leveller, even in a metropolis. 

And we three walked on, wanderers in a 
magic show of forbidden splendor and beauty. 
And I thought of how lovely and yet repulsive 
this enchanted city was. 


84 


Chapter VIII 


M y visit to Shady Side was unsuccessful and 
I returned to my gang in Tuckahoe. An¬ 
other one of us who had gone looking for 
a job—I believe it was our gigantic Andrea—suc¬ 
ceeded in landing work for us at Ovid, N. Y., 
near Lake Cayuga. From there we went to 
New Branford, Conn., Melbourne, Mass, and West 
Pawlet, Yt. That winter the whole gang was 
again confronted by a period of idleness. It is 
always hard to find work for eight or nine men, 
even in summer. We fellow townsmen in this 
strange land clung desperately to one another. 
To be separated from our relatives and friends 
and to work alone was something that frightened 
us old and young. So we were ready to undergo 
a good deal of hardship before we would even 
consider breaking up the gang. 

Nor was our enforced idleness a thing to look 
at with pleasure. For in that period the tiny 
sums that we might have been able to save would 
quickly vanish and we would soon find ourselves 
in debt. 

It was a bad winter and we decided to come to 

85 


Pascal D'Angelo 

New York from where we would sooner or later 
find another job. Meanwhile we tried to limit 
our expenses as much as possible during our en¬ 
forced sojourn in the city. And naturally we 
lived in the slums where people of ill repute are 
not difficult to find. 

One evening Matteo Rossi, our “quiet ace of 
hearts,” happened to be expertly touring from 
one saloon to another for the purpose of finding 
the free lunch that best suited him. In one of 
these saloons he met a young man, also in search 
of free lunch, and they began to talk. This man 
had just arrived in the city, a stranger, and was 
fearful of New York. 

Matteo never lacked sympathy and moral 
help for the unfortunate, and at times he even 
extended pecuniary aid. The stranger must 
have convinced him deeply, for by the end of the 
conversation, our fellow-townsman was ready to 
extend brotherly help to him. And after a few 
reciprocal glasses of beer with which they sealed 
their friendship, Matteo invited the young man 
to spend the night with us. 

We were sitting in the dim living room on 
Franklin Street where we slept at that time. It 
was the house of an old Abruzzese woman who 
rented out a few dirty beds to us. The door was 
opened and in stalked Matteo with his new 
found friend. 


86 


Son of Italy 

“Here you can safely pass the night and as 
many other nights as you wish,” explained 
Matteo as he introduced the stranger to us. 
He was a powerful looking young fellow of 
pleasing face and claimed to come from Campo- 
basso, which is not far from our own section. 
There seemed to be no trace of shyness or sus¬ 
picion in him, either. 

When the old woman entered, he said he 
would not bother to pay for his bed-room every 
night, but would pay for a whole week in ad¬ 
vance. This was a very unusual thing and 
startled us, for we only paid a day at a time, 
being liable to leave at any moment. 

The old woman accepted immediately and 
going into the room where we slept pointed out a 
bed to him, on one side bf which he could sleep. 
The stranger appeared pleased and going out 
bought a few cans of beer Avhich we drank while 
talking about the old country and jobs and food. 
He was a clever young man and soon Giorgio 
Vanno, sensing a rival, began to attack him ver¬ 
bally. And much to our astonishment the 
stranger beat our champion at his own game of 
repartee. 

We all went to sleep early that night, the 
stranger sharing a double bed with his new 
found friend, Matteo, and Andrea. Very early 
the next morning the young man rose, and 
87 


Pascal D'Angelo 

quickly dressing in the gloom, went out. Since it 
was cold and our beds comfortable, we slept 
rather late in the mornings getting up at about 
seven. We talked a little about the stranger and 
all our comments appeared to be favorable. 

That evening he came in a little after dark and 
throwing himself on the bed, said that he was 
very tired. We didn’t do much talking either 
for most of us were gloomy at the prospects of a 
long period of idleness. Rumors had reached us 
that work on the highways and railroads was 
practically at a standstill. A war had started in 
Europe, we heard. Things were bad every¬ 
where. And in the mind of each of us lurked the 
suspicion that we would never find work again, 
and would probably starve to death in this cold 
and extremely snowy country. 

The next morning the young stranger again 
rose ahead of us and went out to work. We were 
still sleeping at the time and none of us heard 
him go except Antonio Lancia, who besides being 
a singer was also a sort of “vigilante” and was 
very seldom caught asleep during the early 
morning hours. The stranger had hinted to 
Antonio about the distance of his job, and how 
long he had to travel before he got there. Why 
should one get up out of a warm bed and without 
apparent cause prevent a man, because he is a 
stranger, from rising and going to work in the 
88 


Son of Italy 

early morning hours? So the young man went, 
unopposed. 

Six o’clock came and then seven, but Matteo 
was not up yet. It was now raining very hard, 
and was such a bad and disagreeable day that 
only one or two had risen. Most of us hesitated 
at the thought of going out to look for a job. 
And when we did get up we took our time, a 
thing which is very rare among us except during 
periods of enforced idleness. 

While Matteo was busy snoring, the door was 
flung open and Filippo, who had just stepped out 
came rumbling in. 

“Hey! Hey!” shouted the youngster, shaking 
his uncle by the shoulder , 4 4 Wake up! Wake up! ” 

Matteo immediately ceased snoring, rubbed 
his eyes slowly, and directed them toward the 
gentle intruder. 

“Lend me a nickel, uncle, ’’explained the lad. 
“There’s a pushcart of very cheap bananas 
passing outside, three for a penny. I want to 
buy some.” 

Grumbling in a good natured way, Matteo 
began to look for his' pocketbook in order to 
give his nephew the requested nickel. For a 
minute he sought in vain. The boy was at the 
window looking at the receding pushcart. I had 
just risen, and putting my hand in my pocket, 
happened to find a nickel, which I gave to Filippo. 
89 


Pascal D'Angelo 

Matteo turned to the lad and grumbled, “Do 
me the favor to go to the devil, both you, the 
bananas, those who produce them, and those 
who sell them.” Then, turning to me, with a 
little change in his tone, “As soon as I get up and 
find my pocketbook among my clothes, I’ll give 
you the nickel.” 

“ That’s all right,” I said, “ I don’t need it. I am 
willing to wait a year for the return of this loan.” 

Again, for the second time, the pacific uncle 
fell a victim to the invasion of Morpheus. But, 
of a sudden, afterwards when he was released, he 
realized that it was long past the time to get 
up, and he began to put his legs outside the bed. 
He rose. He went into the kitchen where all of 
us used to wash in the mornings. After he had 
completely washed himself according to his 
methods, Matteo began to put some more 
clothes on himself until he had enough to enable 
him to go out. He filled his pipe with “spunta- 
tura,” about the strongest smoking tobacco 
manufactured in America. He struck a match, 
and in a second, thick puffs of smoke began to 
come from him. Three big engines starting a 
long, laden freight train could hardly make more 
smoke than he did. All of a sudden he instinct¬ 
ively dug his hand in his trouser pocket seeking 
his pocketbook. And the smoke poured vehe¬ 
mently from his peaceful pipe. 

90 


Son of Italy 

“What the devil!” he dug his hands into his 
other pocket. Another curse, more emphatic 
than the first. Into the first pocket again, and 
then into his jacket, the thick searching hand 
went. 

Matteo’s eyes opened wide as a suspicious 
thought came into his mind. 

We had turned curiously toward him at his 
exclamations and frantic movements. Quickly 
he yelled the news: his pocketbook with sixty 
dollars in it had vanished. This caused us all a 
great shock, for sixty dollars is rather a large 
sum of money. 

Matteo was not a man to waste much time in 
lamentation. “Down in these quarters I found 
him, and down here I’ll find him again,” he 
muttered with a threatening glint in his dark 
eyes. We were very sympathetic and offered our 
aid in the ensuing search for the stranger. Mat¬ 
teo nodded and grumbled ominously. 46 I’ll find 
him. And when I do he’ll know it.” Saying 
which the angry man instinctively clenched his 
fist and shook his huge forearm toward the 
window. 

All that day Matteo spent prowling through 
the Italian section that spreads around Mul¬ 
berry Street. Some of us as we wandered about 
looking for a job kept a sharp eye open for the 
thief, but without result. 

91 


Pascal D'Angelo 

That night Matteo waited in the house—for 
the return of the young stranger! Filippo, who 
was young, kept insisting that perhaps it was a 
joke. But of course no one came to amiably 
return the money and exhort Matteo’s forgive¬ 
ness. 

When we awoke, early the next morning, 
Matteo was already gone. His persistency 
augured ill for the thief, and I myself knew that 
a blow from his fist was not a thing to be lightly 
received. 

That afternoon I ran across Matteo on Mott 
Street, and having nothing to do, offered to join 
him in the search. We prowled around for an 
hour when of a sudden, on Bayard Street, he 
stopped. His face became red. 

“ There he is! ” he whispered. 

High up, enthroned, and oblivious of our gaze, 
the stranger was having his shoes shined. 

As he calmly puffed a cigarette, he turned and 
his eyes fell upon Matteo. Up he sprang. Shout¬ 
ing a very vigorous word, Matteo leaped after 
him and caught him by the arm. 

| All at once three or four young men, con¬ 
federates of the thief came to his aid. One of 
them threw me down from behind. I pulled 
him down after me, and we grappled in the 
gutter. Shouting and excited, the populace 
came around. Two others attacked Matteo. 

92 


Son of Italy 

With his free arm the stranger punched him. 
Matteo hit the thief full blast under the chin, 
thus chilling his ardour. And Matteo shook the 
well-dressed young man and punched him. And 
Matteo kicked one of the two who attacked 
him. And Matteo started to drag the thief after 
him. 

Just then, fortunately for us, Andrea came 
running up. He knew nothing of the fistic art. 
But one blow of his in the stomach sent a con¬ 
federate of the thief rolling across the sidewalk. 
Matteo was still gripping the forlorn thief and 
yelling, “Police! Police!” Some of the spec¬ 
tators had been glaring in a threatening manner 
toward us, but Andrea’s huge size made them 
discreet. Meanwhile the gangster who was 
grappling with me glanced up and saw Andrea 
running toward us. Up he sprang and fled. 

With Andrea and me as body guard, Matteo 
now dragged the repentant stranger toward the 
police station nearby on Elizabeth Street. A 
noisy crowd followed us on our march, during 
which we did not meet a single policeman. 

At the police station Matteo cried his woes in 
broken English. The stranger glibly shouted, 
“Arrest this man! He hit me without cause! I 
don’t know him!” 

“He’s a thief,” growled Andrea. 

The police captain began to look sternly at the 
93 


Pascal D'Angelo 

four of us. We all tried to say something at the 
same time. The captain told us to shut up. 

Systematically then he began to question us. 
The thief denied everything and vociferously 
demanded that we be placed under arrest for 
assault and battery. 

The upshot of this all was that the young 
stranger was searched. An old pocketbook was 
found on him. Immediately Matteo claimed it. 
There were forty dollars in it, though the 
original sum had been sixty dollars. 

“But how do you know this is yours?” 
sternly asked the police captain, while the 
prisoner wildly claimed that he had found the 
pocketbook. 

Quietly Matteo told him where to look and lol 
written in ink on the inside of the pocketbook 
was Matteo’s name I 

That settled the prisoner. Meanwhile the 
police captain sternly informed Matteo that he 
himself would have been arrested were it not for 
the finding of his name in the pocketbook. 
Matteo, grown silent again, grunted in vindi¬ 
cated fashion. 

At the trial the thief, who was really a Cala¬ 
brese, was found guilty and received a very 
heavy sentence—all of which came from his 
underestimating the determination of Matteo. 
These gangs in the slums prey rather safely on 
94 


Son of Italy 

the poor timid immigrant laborers. Well, 
Matteo, though quiet, was anything but timid 
and the stranger made the mistake of his life 
when he mistook our “ace of hearts” for an easy 
mark. 


95 


Chapter IX 


And still we went around asking for a job. As 
f\ the weeks passed on our condition became 
critical. One or two, including Giovanni 
the hilarious, were past the end of their resources 
and were approaching a point where they could 
no longer hope for a loan even from kind-hearted 
friends. Each one of us went about, seeking work 
for seven or eight men. But so desperate had we 
become that we began to consider separating and 
finding work in several different places. It hurts 
the conscience of honest people when they have 
to live on borrowed money. We were ready to go 
anywhere and one of us even began to talk about 
Chicago. 

One evening when we had the usual gathering 
to see if anything new had sprung up, Giorgio, 
the clever talker, who was perhaps our most 
assiduous searcher seemed to be affected by an 
unusual sense of humor. 

“Work is the easiest thing to find,” he began, 
laughing merrily. 

We turned our gloomy downhearted faces 
toward him. 


96 


Son of Italy 

“What is there to prevent a man from working 
as hard as he wants?” continued Giorgio. 

We really didn’t consider it an appropriate 
occasion for such foolish remarks, and one of us, 
my father, I think, told him so. 

Giorgio straightened up, and with a merry 
light in his brown eyes, said, “Don’t be afraid. 
I have found a place where we can all resume our 
labors before the end of the week.” 

Our eyes brightened. We all shouted at once, 
“Is it true?” We had doubts when Giorgio said 
a thing, for he was very rarely serious. 

Giorgio swore by all the saints, with his hand 
over his heart, that the problem of finding a job 
had been settled by him. He had found the 
job for us all, and our worries would soon be 
over. 

That night we ate more heartily to celebrate 
our unexpected luck. What could our celebra¬ 
tion consist of? Perhaps adding another soup to 
our “menu” and a five cent bottle of beer. 

When going to bed, we talked long about the 
job. Giorgio was not sure where it was except 
that it was in the south. 

“The south?” said Andrea, “that is where 
oranges grow.” 

The cold wind was assailing our windows and 
we thought with awakened pleasure of a warm 
countryside. 


97 


Pascal D'Angelo 

“There are negroes in the south,” added 
another. 

My father remarked, “I wonder what the rail¬ 
road fare will be.” The others were unwilling to 
talk about such an unpleasant thing and turning 
around under their coverlets began to discuss the 
more agreeable aspects, such as the climate and 
the state of vegetation in the land of perpetual 
summer to which we were going. 

With an indescribable restlessness we waited 
for the dawn. Someone got up at midnight ask¬ 
ing what time it could be. 

“Well,” came Antonio’s silvery voice, “don’t 
fear. You won’t miss to-morrow when it gets 
here. You won’t miss it.” 

A couple of us were snoring. It was a very 
small room where the eight of us slept in three 
beds. We were all known to each other, or else 
we would surely have objected to sleeping with 
unknown men in a strange house. 

It was not yet seven when we were all dressed. 
But according to Giorgio Yanno we would have 
to wait until ten o’clock before we could go to 
arrange for our departure. Filippo and I were 
anxious to look over the employment agency 
where he had found work, but Giorgio laughed 
at us and refused to tell us where it was. 

In a happy mood, however, we went to an 
Abruzzese restaurant on Mulberry Street and 
98 


Son of Italy 

told the proprietor about our good luck. He 
was a paesano, or fellow-townsman, who was 
feeding us on the mercy of credit. Almost with 
one voice we shouted the good news. He was 
very much pleased, for two evident reasons— 
one, that he would have to trust us no longer, 
and the other that he might soon begin to cash 
in what he had invested at the mercy of con¬ 
science. And I am sorry to say that someone of 
us has not yet repaid his kindness. 

After we had finished a leisurely breakfast, we 
looked anxiously at the clock. It was still early. 
However, we rose and instinctively followed the 
leash of our thoughts toward the 4 job-giving” 
place. We presented ourselves in front of the 
door half an hour before the appointed time, and 
began to walk back and forth in order to keep 
warm, for it was a cold, raw day. 

As soon as the office door was flung open we 
timidly approached it and entered. A young 
man was putting out some glaring signs in 
Italian calling for “braccianti” or laborers. In¬ 
side, a pompous gentleman loomed in back of a 
wooden counter. 

Giorgio whispered loudly, “He’s the man who 
gives us the work.” 

Majestically, the man put on a pair of eye¬ 
glasses and scanned us. Other laborers, strangers 
to us, were crowding into the place. 

99 


Pascal D'Angelo 

Giorgio asked him how long we had to wait 
for a job, and how much it would cost to get to 
the place. 

“It is like this,” uttered the almost obese- 
looking man in a sonorous Neapolitan dialect, 
“you can start to-morrow if you want. The 
place is in West Virginia, which you may know, 
though I doubt it. I’ll give you a letter of 
recommendation, and it will cost you five dollars 
for the fare—that is, if you all go together on one 
ticket, or else it will cost you eight dollars.” 

“Five dollars for each or for all?” asked 
Antonio. 

Glaring at him in scorn the man turned im¬ 
pressively away toward a file cabinet. 

High railroad fares are usually what keep 
laborers near this hell-hole metropolis. Going to 
a distant job is a gamble. A man may pay a 
large part of his scanty savings for fare. And 
when he gets there he may find living conditions 
impossible and the foreman too overbearing. 
Perhaps he will be fired at the end of week. 
Where will he be then? 

The obese gentleman mumbled almost to him¬ 
self, “This is on the Cumberland Railroad.” 

We waited anxiously. All at once he wheeled 
about and thundered, “How many men are you 
in all?” 

At this question everybody’s heart nearly 
100 


Son of Italy 

stopped beating. We felt sure that he asked us 
because he did not have enough work to occupy 
the whole gang. Each one said to himself, “Who 
knows how many men he wants? I may be the 
unlucky one who must be discarded.” 

Hesitating, Giorgio spoke up, “We are eight 
at present,” and in his usual satiric way he 
added with feigned innocence, “but I can get 
you more good men, in case you want them.” 

“Fine! Fine!” exclaimed the portly dispenser 
of work. “This ticket calls for eleven men. That 
means three more. But be sure to get good 
people.” Personally a man may be very bad, but 
as long as he spends more money than the rest in 
their camp stores, he will be listed as “good.” 

Immediately we set out on our task of hunting 
up three more “good” men in order to save three 
dollars each on one railroad fare. 

Finally, down near the park at Mulberry bend 
we ran across two husky acquaintances who were 
from a town not far from ours. We asked them 
if they wanted to go to West Virginia with us; 
we had two places open, luckily for them; their 
guardian saints had guided us to them. 

Turning up his nose one of them answered, 
“You’ll never get me to go down to that ‘casa 
du li diavel’ in West Virginia, even if they give 
me five dollars a day.” 

The other said, if the trip was free he might be 
101 


Pascal D'Angelo 

willing to come, even without his pal; but if 
money had to be disbursed in advance he was 
unwilling to take the chance. 

So we continued walking through Mulberry 
Street, Franklin Street, Bayard, Worth and 
other illustrious downtown thoroughfares where 
we thought we might find “good” people who 
could fill the three empty places. It was a 
little hard because some had no money for the 
fare, and some didn’t wish to part from New 
York believing that later they could find a job 
nearer town. Why should they go into the 
nether depths of the spacious Americas? 

The fare was the terrible thing. There were 
plenty of men ready to work at anything, but 
they had no means of raising the five dollars. 
After we had visited three or four “paisani” 
restaurants and houses around Mulberry and 
Mott Streets we succeeded in finding three men 
who fitted all qualifications and who were 
anxious to work even in West Virginia. 

So we all went to the old woman’s house on 
Franklin Street where we were still temporarily 
living—by paying fifteen cents per night— 
happy at the thought that our gang was com¬ 
plete. We drank a couple of cans of beer with 
our new comrades and proceeded to get well 
acquainted. The first one of them was called 
Teofilo. He had been a blacksmith and, though 
102 


Son of Italy 

small in size, had a tremendous arm development. 
Another was called Armando. He came from 
Caserta and was a very handsome, bronze-faced 
man. He had a bicycle and took it with him, 
thinking that as the south was a warm place, he 
could use it during his stay there. The third 
man, Nicolo, was tall and lanky. We had some 
doubts of his ability to do heavy work until he 
started with the pick and shovel. 

Coming out we went into the employment 
office. Each one of us gave the pompous gentle¬ 
man five dollars for the fare, and handing us the 
ticket and letter he announced that at three 
o’clock the same day we could leave New York 
for our destined labors in West Virginia. And 
we could arrive there in time to go to work the 
following day. 

We had about two hours to get ready. We all 
went to get our bundles and our one valise in 
which we had our common possessions. These 
consisted of pots, four old tin plates, rather 
yellow-looking, some spoons and forks for use in 
case we should ever dare to cook macaroni. 
Years afterwards when I had learned some words 
I named this same battered valise our “culinary 
panoply.” The rest of our armaments were a 
needle, thread, an old pair of pants from which 
we used to strip pieces of cloth for patching our 
clothes, remnants of a linen shirt and numerous 
103 


Pascal D'Angelo 

buttons taken from shirts and drawers which we 
had thrown away when they reached the un- 
patchable stage. We got our personal bundles 
ready, Andrea swung the heavy valise on his 
broad shoulder, and we set out toward the dis¬ 
tant dock of the Pennsylvania Railroad. And 
there on our presenting the ticket we would be 
led, transported and conveyed to the land of 
sunshine and warmth. 

Of course we walked, led by huge Andrea and 
Giorgio who looked very short beside him. We 
were light-hearted and talked loudly to one 
another. As we passed through the noisy streets 
many unhealthy, pale-faced inhabitants of the 
city glanced in disgust at the ragged clothes that 
covered our strong bodies. 

While awkwardly crossing the crowded current 
of Broadway, one of our new men, Teofilo, was 
knocked down by the automobile of some hurried 
and careless inhabitant of this too-egoistic me¬ 
tropolis. We all ran to help him. A crowd 
collected. Teofilo rose to his feet. He was dazed 
but not much hurt at all—which was almost a 
miracle. This was very fortunate, for Andrea’s 
face had gotten white and I knew that he would 
have sprung on that chauffeur and beaten him 
almost to death. Andrea had a glorious con¬ 
tempt for city people, especially for those who 
assume such superiority over us foreign laborers. 

104 


Son of Italy 

Picking up our things we hurried along toward 
pier 13. The catastrophe which had almost 
happened made us gayer and happier than ever. 
Good-naturedly we jested with Teofilo about his 
lucky name. On introducing himself to us he 
had seriously told us that anyone who was called 
Teofilo possessed seven golden blessings in his 
life. At present, we told him, he had only five 
blessings left, having already used up two of 
them, one when he met us, and the other when 
he escaped damage from the automobile. 

Laughingly he answered, “Who knows? I 
may need all five of them in the place to which 
we are going.” 

In the land of summer and flowers? Unneces¬ 
sary, we told him. 

Finally we were in the train speeding through 
dull winter landscapes toward our new job. 


105 


Chapter X 


I t was during the night hours that we got off 
a local train and stood shivering and con¬ 
fused on a dark platform. 

“Can this be the place?” we thought. 

An icy sword-like wind assailed us. We 
shivered. It was bitter cold, worse than New 
York. And where were the oranges? And where 
the flowers? 

The region was indistinct around us, its hilly 
distances glimmering faintly with long stretches 
of wet snow. Inside the small wooden station 
was a dimly lit room. In a body, we entered and 
presented our checks to the baggage master. 

He shook his head. There was no baggage for 
us. Perhaps it would arrive the following day. 
We were angered at the delay, for in our baggage 
were our warm quilts and mattress covers that 
we used to fill with straw or dried leaves on 
reaching a new place. We would have been con¬ 
siderably more angered at the time had we 
known where our poor baggage had gone. For 
there is another town in Pennsylvania also 
called Williamsport; and the carelessness of the 
106 


Son of Italy 

baggage agent in New York had caused our 
belongings to be sent there. 

Out we went, like a flock of sheep in the 
darkness where our feet sank at every step into 
wet sticky snow. It was beginning to rain as 
we started on our tramp toward the job which 
was about four miles away on the other side of 
the Potomac river. 

Through the snow and rain we waded, hardly 
seeing our way in the dark. Each held his head 
down and trudged silently against the downpour 
which now came full-blast against us. Our 
clothes were absolutely soaked, like sponges 
unable to absorb another drop. As the cold rain 
fell it froze on the ground and we began to slip 
and slide. We had to walk the entire distance 
on railroad ties which were so slippery that each 
of us must have had at least a dozen falls before 
we reached our destination. 

As we were crossing the Potomac on a long 
trestle the wind blew my hat into the water. A 
train rumbled toward us, its light flashing. 
We clung for life on the narrow space outside 
the track, but nothing happened save that 
Teofilo of the lucky name dropped his personal 
bag containing his most precious belongings into 
the Potomac. 

On reaching the West Virginia side we again 
plunged into the hilly darkness. After we had 
107 


Pascal D'Angelo 

trudged on for heaven knows how long, we saw 
the faint glimmer of lamplight through a small 
shanty window. We approached, hoping that 
it was the place we were seeking. But a fat 
negro who stepped to the door announced that 
we still had another mile to go before reaching 
the end of our journey. 

On we went. Miles appeared very long that 
night. And finally, after a seemingly endless 
walk we reached the camp. Shining with the 
rain that had frozen to their black walls, five 
long shanties appeared in the dark. At one 
side was the camp store, a small shack where the 
commissary man sold bread, clothes, liquors and 
other necessities at the most exorbitant prices. 

We knocked at the door of the first shanty. 
A man peeked out. At our request he slipped a 
jacket over his shoulders and came out to guide 
us toward the shanty where Mike the commis¬ 
sary man was. 

On our entrance Mike was just opening a 
bottle of beer. He peered curiously at us. 
Four other men were playing cards around an 
empty beer keg which they used for a table. 

Looking us over with fishy gray eyes Mike 
stepped out toward our party. Georgio Vanno 
explained who we were and Mike grunted for 
answer. 

We announced our predicament, that we 
108 


Son of Italy 

had no blankets or mattress covers and were 
wet to the skin. 

He shrugged his shoulders, mumbling, “Too 
bad. But I can’t help you. You may sleep 
in the next shanty where there is room for you.’’ 
Saying which, he turned toward his beer bottle 
and smacked his lips. 

We went out and hurried into the next shanty 
where only four other men were living at the 
time. Along the walls were broad shelves of 
pine boards on which we could sleep. 

The driving wind shook the thin walls of the 
shanty which were merely composed of boards 
with tar paper nailed on the outside. Unde¬ 
cided, shivering, we all stood there. They 
had a stove in the place, but no coal; nor was 
there a stove pipe through which the smoke 
could pass out. 

One of the four who was lying on the shelf 
turned about under his warm blanket and 
grumbled that we could get some soft coal at 
the boiler house. When we finally succeeded 
in starting a fire, however, it was impossible to 
stand the gas given off by the soft coal. 

Without any appreciable success we tried to 
dry our clothes. It was getting very late. 
And gradually tiredness and sleep won us. 
Drearily we threw ourselves on the boards over 
which we had strewn some dirty straw. 

109 


Pascal D'Angelo 

When we arose early next morning our muscles 
were all stiffened and ached terribly. In order 
to limber ourselves a little we moved up and 
down the shanty. 

A frost had succeeded the icy rain and we 
felt the wet of our clothes piercing our bodies 
like sharp needles. 

The commissary man came in and said that 
we had better hurry out to work or we would 
get no food whatever from his store. And 
standing he glared about to see if anyone was 
sick or unable to rise. Seeing us all up, he went 
rumbling on, and returned after a while with 
the foreman who was to boss us. 

The creaking and cracked floor was strewn 
with straw which had fallen from the shelves or 
“beds.” Straw covered our clothes and hair. 
The whole inside of the shanty with its forlorn 
occupants gave a picture of moral wreck and 
bitterness. We were pigs in our sty. • 

This commissary man, Mike, though violent 
and ferocious, was really not so bad at heart. 
Once or twice he would, when drunk, threaten 
a few of the men with a rifle. But outside of 
that he was rather better than many others I 
have had the misfortune to know. 

The commissary system prevails throughout 
this country. In its most extreme workings it 
results in perpetual peonage of the unlucky labor- 
110 


Son of Italy 

ers who get caught. Usually the lure is high 
wages and free transportation to some distant 
locality. My own uncle, Giuseppe d’Angelo, 
was attracted to a place in Florida where he was 
held eight months before he was able to effect 
an escape. The food they gave him was vile 
and the hying conditions were unspeakable. 
The laborers—white men—were guarded by 
ferocious negroes with guns which they used at 
the least excuse. And this in free America. 
No wages are paid, and the men are told that 
instead of expecting any they themselves are in 
debt to the company. 

A commissary man contracts to furnish the 
company with laborers. In return he is given 
the privilege of running the camp store—an 
absolute monopoly most of whose profits go to 
men higher up. He also has a free hand over 
the men, firing, hiring, robbing and even pre¬ 
venting poor unfortunates from leaving. 

The commissary man always tries to get ac¬ 
quainted with men who have a large number of 
friends among the workers and who can persuade 
them to go where he wants. This sort of man 
gets perhaps 15 or 20 cents more per day— 
which is considered an envied privilege, besides 
the fact that his board bill is always lower 
than anyone else’s. 

Each man has a small book in which are 

111 


Pascal D'Angelo 

marked the prices of the objects he buys. The 
commissary man also keeps a book. And it is 
his book that counts, not the laborer’s. If you 
try to save money and spend very little you will 
find when pay day comes that you are charged 
with as much debt as someone else who ate his 
fill. In the more decent places, where men are 
not slaves, the man who does not spend enough 
usually gets fired after a few warnings. A 
laborer is compelled to buy from the camp store 
at prices which would make a New York profiteer 
green with envy. And what they do receive 
after the commissary bill is deducted amounts 
to very little. 

The foremen are helpless and subordinate to 
the commissary man. When work is scarce it 
is the married men who are the first to be fired, 
for the single as a rule spend more. And a 
man who drinks every cent he earns is considered 
a “good” man. The most welcome person is 
an organizer—not of unions—but of games. 
For during games the beer flows freely, for who¬ 
ever loses must buy drinks. 

And all this in free America! 

We followed our new foreman down the road. 
We were by now auguring ourselves bad luck. 

“Who knows how it will end?” muttered 
Antonio. 

We thought of our lost baggage and our van- 
112 


Son of Italy 

ished dreams of a sunny climate. Sheeplike 
we followed our foreman to where a large gang 
was already working. There were little engines 
called “donkey” puffing back and forth. A 
steam shovel was lifting a big rock caught in its 
iron teeth. Steam drillers were battering the 
stony bank alongside the railroad. Derricks 
were swinging the heaviest boulders about 20 
feet above the ground with amazing ease. Now 
and then a Cumberland Valley Railroad freight 
train would pass by; then a coal train; then a 
passenger train. 

All at once while we were approaching this 
orderly confusion a man came running toward us 
shouting and waving a red flag. The workers 
scurried under the cover. We stopped. There 
was a roar and half of the rocky bank flew up in a 
thousand pieces. None of us was hit though 
badly menaced. When everything which had 
gone up had finally come down, we timidly 
approached the shattered ledge of rocks. And 
without many ceremonies the foreman set us to 
work there. 

Several weeks passed. We were dissatisfied 
with the place. Some talked of leaving. Some 
talked of staying a little while more. Rumors 
were reaching us of good jobs in other parts. 

One day we were working on an embankment. 
A derrick was perched above us. We used it to 
113 


Pascal D'Angelo 

lift big boulders into the cars that were pulled 
on the improvised tracks by the donkey engines. 

There was a snap, a yell. 

One^of the guys or cables that held the derrick 
broke. Down crashed the enormous structure. 

Shouting together we leaped away. There 
was a howl of pain, blood-curdling and piercing. 
We turned our startled eyes. Two men were 
pinned under the derrick. One of them was 
Teofilo, the other our huge Andrea. 

It seemed almost the work of an instant that 
snapped the life of the smaller man. Andrea was 
still alive, though, his face twisted by agony. 
Teofilo stared off into infinity. 

Quickly we all rushed together to lift the der¬ 
rick. But we were too excited; and as we raised 
a ponderous weight, in spite of our taut muscles, 
it slid down the embankment. With a horrible 
grinding sound of flesh and bones it crushed the 
last life out of Andrea Lenta. We covered our 
eyes with our arms and groaned. 

Within a few days after this fatal accident the 
gang broke up. We had lost all heart; work in 
that place was oppressive; we felt enslaved. 
And finally, discouraged and saddened by our 
loss, we decided to quit. Sadly we returned to 
New York. 

One night shortly after our return my father 
announced to me that he was thinking of leav- 
114 


Son of Italy 

ing for Italy. “We are not better off than 
when we started,” he said, and asked me if I 
wished to go back with him. 

I shook my head. Something had grown in 
me during my stay in America. Something was 
keeping me in this wonderful perilous land 
where I had suffered so much and where I had 
so much more to suffer. Should I quit this 
great America without a chance to really know 
it? Again I shook my head. There was a lin¬ 
gering suspicion that somewhere in this vast 
country an opening existed, that somewhere I 
would strike the light. I could not remain in 
the darkness perpetually. 

My father was much saddened, for I was un¬ 
able to make him understand the thoughts that 
were vaguely moulding in my mind. And he 
went away from me, a broken-hearted man. 

Matteo and Giorgio returned to Introdacqua. 
Antonio went out west and I have never heard 
of him since. The others found jobs near New 
York, but gradually drifted away. And of the 
original gang I have only seen Filippo once or 
twice. 

I was left alone. 

While wandering around New York I ran 
across a fellow-townsman, an older man called 
Gaetano. We kept together for company’s 
sake, and tried to get a job in Albany, Troy and 
115 


Pascal D'Angelo 

New Haven. Fully discouraged we returned 
to New York. 

Toward the end of January we met a man 
from Shady Side who was a friend of my new com¬ 
panion. This man was a foreman on the Erie 
Railroad yard about two miles south of Fort Lee 
ferry. He told us that the pay was too small— 
as it really was: $1.13 per day. During the pre¬ 
ceding summer our wages had been $1.85 and 
we were terribly shocked at the news. In spite 
of all shocks, however, we had to submit and 
indeed considered ourselves lucky to find any 
kind of work that terrible winter. 

We went to live in a box car located in the 
center of the yard where a few men were 
already staying. It was a broken down affair 
which scarcely protected us from the rain. In 
winter frost and ice were near my ill-kept 
bed. My best blanket which my mother had 
made for me and which had perigrinated 
through America with me, was now divided into 
many useless pieces. 

Living in the box car we were always handy in 
case there should be a wreck or other trouble. 
We were liable to be called out at any hour— 
usually in the middle of the night. In spite of 
rain, snow, sleet and icy wind, we had to work 
until the wreckage was removed and the dam¬ 
aged tracks repaired. 


116 


Son of Italy 

That was our work; handling and carrying 
wet ties on our shoulders, now and then 
stumbling on the rough ground of the unlit yard, 
and cursing just to appease our pains—with the 
heavy ties and rails on our shoulders and the 
slippery ice under our feet. That was our work. 
All around was noise and confusion; trains pil¬ 
ing on trains—cars creeping smoothly at you 
in the darkness, bells, toots. While I was there 
two men were caught under a freight car, sev¬ 
eral were smothered under coal in the coal 
dumps, one suffocated in the steam house. It 
was a war in which we poor laborers—Poles and 
Italians—were perpetually engaged. 

The accident in the coal dump made a vivid 
impression on me. And I tried, long after, to 
describe its effect in the following poem: 

ACCIDENT IN THE COAL DUMP 

Like a dream that dies in crushed splendor under the 
weight of awakening 

He lay, limbs spread in abandon, at the bottom of a smooth 
hollow of glistening coal. 

We were leaning about on our shovels and sweating, 

Red faced in the lantern-light, 

Still warm from our frenzied digging and hardly feeling 
the cold midnight wind. 

He had been a handsome quiet fellow, a family man with 
whom I had often talked 

Of the petty joys and troubles of our little dark world; 

117 


Pascal D'Angelo 

In the saloon on Saturday night. 

And there he was now, huge man, an extinguished sun still 
followed by unseen faithful planets, 

Dawning on dead worlds in an eclipse across myriad stars— 

Vanished like a bubble down the stream of eternity, 

Heedlessly shattered on the majestic falls of some unknown 
shores. 

And we turned slowly toward home, shivering, straggling, 
sombre— 

Save one youngster who was trying to fool himself and his 
insistent thoughts, 

With a carefree joke about the dead man. 

Snow began to fall like a white dream through the rude 
sleep of the winter night, 

And a wild eyed woman came running out of the darkness. 


118 


Chapter XI 


OMNIS SUM 

On the Calvary of thought I knelt, in torment of silence. 
The stars were like sparks struck from the busy forge of 
vengeful night. 

The sky was like a woman in fury 
Dishevelling her tresses of darkness over me. 

It seemed as if the whole universe were accusing me 
Of the anguish of Deity. 

W hen a laborer leaves one locality for an¬ 
other, he always does so for some fancied 
betterment and not with the idea of tour¬ 
ing the country. There is nothing for him to 
see. And always, the lure of advantage is 
changed after the first few days into disillusion 
and remorse. For wherever he goes there are 
hovels, hard work and brutal foremen—and that 
feeling of autocracy over him which he probably 
never knew before and which makes him bestial 
and unconsciously fatalistic. 

In 1916 while all the other companies were 
paying good wages our own beloved railroad, the 
Erie, was persistent in allowing us $1.50 per day. 
119 


Pascal D'Angelo 

We asked for $1.75, which was reasonable and 
less than what other places paid. But our de¬ 
mands, though honest, were indignantly re¬ 
jected and the whole gang left in a body. In 
those days when work was rapidly picking up 
after a long slump, it was a matter of each man 
finding the very best he could. My case was 
typical: a long lay-off the previous year had left 
me in debt. And now there was a chance of 
making money. I was lured by the $2.25 per 
day promised on the state roads in Northern 
New Jersey, and went there alone. I spent all 
the money I had for the fare. 

! There were many various gangs working in 
the place: stone-breakers, stone-drillers, exca¬ 
vators, concrete workers and others, each with 
its own foreman. There were men loading 
stones of various sizes newly broken, on wagons; 
steam-rollers puffing along; gangs laying out 
first large stones, then smaller, and then sand* 
Over everything they put on tar and a covering 
of powder which we called “fine stuff.” 

I succeeded in getting work with the concrete 
gang. The road was progressing rapidly. There 
were rivulets over which little concrete bridges 
were required. Having no mixer for the con¬ 
crete we had to mix the sand, stones and cement 
with our shovels right on the spot. And here 
came some of our hardest work, especially hard, 
120 


Son of Italy 

as it was summer. On some of those cloudless 
days when the sun blazed down on us we would 
be carrying dusty bags full of heavy cement on 
our shoulders continuously. The dust mixed 
with the sweat beneath, burning the shoulders 
and itching. Very often after I had wiped my 
cheeks and around my neck with a dirty hand¬ 
kerchief I had to spread it out on the grass to 
dry while I staggered along through the flaming 
sunlight with my load. When dry the cement 
made the handkerchief appear petrified, 
i And the mixing. The foreman was getting 
angry that I wiped my face while the others 
worked bowed with the sweat pouring down 
over them. He snarled that it was just an excuse 
for raising my bowed body from the continual 
toil. This foreman’s name was Domenick. He 
spoke in a weird Calabrese dialect and cursed 
always. He was a big broad-shouldered man, 
but his dry features were irregular and looked 
dissipated and his eyes were bloodshot. There 
was no appeal for one of us from his autocracy 
and he knew it. He had his spies in the gang 
and tyrannized over us—this foreman of the con¬ 
crete workers. His threat of firing always awoke 
in us visions of aimless wanderings and dark 
months without jobs. And deep in his heart a 
man hates to go around begging for a job to be 
greeted with a sneer or a turned shoulder. Well, 
121 


Pascal D'Angelo 

this foreman made us understand that in order 
to straighten our backs even a little, we needed 
a better excuse than that of wiping the sweat 
from our faces even though burning with cement 
dust. We said nothing, but bowed lower, while 
he stood straight watching us all the time. That 
was his job. 

We had to dig foundations for these small 
bridges or “culverts.” And always we found 
water; my feet were wet practically all the time. 
One day the foreman ordered us to go down into 
a short trench or foundation and make it deeper. 
The bottom was a deep pool of brown water. 
Most of the men had rubber boots; I had none. 
I hesitated. 

The “boss” who was beginning to dislike me 
shouted harshly, “If you want your ten hours 
put down in the time book you’d better go down 
and dig; and hurry up about it.” And down 
I went. 

Often I’d try to put a piece of wood or flat 
stone under my feet; but usually the stone sank 
in the mire or my feet slipped away while work¬ 
ing. So I invariably got wet. Rain or sunshine 
we had to work ahead; for our tyrant was that 
sort of man whom the contractors call “an excel¬ 
lent and efficient foreman.” 

One day while we were finishing one of those 
small bridges, it began to rain. The planks lead- 
122 


Son of Italy 

mg to the top of the foundation on which we 
had to climb were more vertical than horizontal. 
It was a steep climb up any time. And the rain 
rendered it more difficult by making the planks 
slippery. My job was to push wheelbarrows 
full of concrete up to the top of the foundation 
and dump the mixture down into the wooden 
forms. This was continuous and very hard 
work, for as soon as I returned an empty wheel¬ 
barrow, another full one greeted me. It was 
almost impossible to push a high-heaped wheel¬ 
barrow on the inclined slippery planks. I was 
going up with one not quite so full when the 
foreman shouted something to the men below. 

Coming back I found the second wheelbarrow 
filled up to the brim. I paused. The foreman 
came running up, hot-faced. I said the load was 
too heavy to safely handle on the wet planks. 

Grasping the handles he raised them and look¬ 
ing fiercely back, shouted, “Heavy, is it?” 

“Well,” I remarked, “anybody can do that. 
But look where I must go with it.” 

“I’ll show you!” and he cursed. He started 
pushing the heavy wheelbarrow up toward the 
woodwork. But his feet began to slip a little 
and he saw that there might be danger for him* 
So he stopped and said, “But why should I go, 
there? I’m the foreman. What do you think I 
have you here for?” 


123 


Pascal D'Angelo 

Meanwhile some of the bolder laborers, recog¬ 
nizing my right, began hurriedly to take off a 
few shovelfuls from the top of the overladen 
wheelbarrow. But the boss, cursing and threat¬ 
ening to fire the whole lot of them, made them 
put it back. And he ordered me to go ahead 
with the load. Without another word I bowed 
myself—a weakling under the force of necessity. 
The injustice of it split my thoughts like light¬ 
ning, and I realized that a fire was smoldering 
in me. But what could I do? Rain was falling 
heavily. Not much time was given to decide. 
Almost without knowing it I found myself push¬ 
ing upward a top-heavy wheelbarrow. While 
reaching near the top my feet slipped and I lost 
my balance. The wheelbarrow dropped down 
into the foundation. Wildly I threw out my 
hands and propped myself against the wood¬ 
work in order to avoid an inevitable fall. A 
rusty nail pierced my right hand. And I 
shrieked. Blood began to come out from both 
sides of my hand. 

The foreman came running up. “Get out, 
you fool!” he shouted, “you can’t work here any 
more!” And I couldn’t. 

All wet, tired, with bleeding, aching hand, I 
went back to the “shanty.” My hand began to 
swell. I didn’t know what to do. There was a 
small village further down the road but no drug 
124 


Son of Italy 

store. There was only a grocery store that had 
peroxide. So I went down there through the 
rain, purchased a bottle and hurried back to 
medicate my hand. In the dark shanty there 
was an old stove but not lit. I could not dry 
my wet clothes. There was not even a good 
place where I could hang them out for the night. 
Outside it was still raining. I hung my dripping 
jacket near my wooden bed—a bed made of two 
boards nailed together. Some hours passed 
without my eating anything because I didn’t feel 
much like eating. But even if I had been 
hungry, there was nothing more in the place 
except a loaf of stale bread and a piece of the 
cheapest and almost uneatable “Italian” salami 
made in America. In that condition, and feeling 
a repulsion toward an undesired food, I went to 
bed with an empty stomach. Now I began to 
be restless and felt the full pain of my wounded 
hand. My mind was dark. I felt like a hurt 
dog who slinks off to some corner where it can 
lick its wounds in silence. 

Then the rest of the gang came straggling 
home through the downpour. They all made 
noise, and the chilly air of the shanty became 
foul with the sweat that steamed from them. 
One began to start a fire in the stove. A couple 
were arguing. There were shouts; and smoke 
filled the shanty. Some went to get food. There 
125 


Pascal D'Angelo 

was frying in fat. After eating, one of them 
came over to ask me how I felt. 

It was past midnight, but my eyes had not 
yet been closed. Everything was silent now save 
the beating of the rain outside and a sharp 
measured drip on the floor near the foot of my 
bed. The fever that was beating my wounded 
hand seemed little better, and sleep began to 
intensify. By about two o’clock in the morning 
I must have fallen asleep. 

By five o’clock some of the men began to stir. 
They rose, yawned and spoke, and set about 
preparing their breakfast and some lunch to be 
taken on the job. Some whistled. An old 
fellow sang. Somebody was cursing outside that 
the wood was too wet and he couldn’t get the 
fire going. 

From a corner came a shout, “How is the 
weather? Is it worth while getting up?” 

Someone shouted back, “It doesn’t look so bad 
to-day. You’d better get your lunch ready.” 

About ten minutes to six a few started for the 
job. It was still quite dark, the sky showing 
through the open door in a gray turmoil of clouds 
and mists. Others began to leave, and by a 
quarter after six there was nobody around me. 
For a while I remained alone in that dim barn¬ 
like place. Then instinctively, in spite of my 
wounded hand, I felt the need of going to work 
126 


Son of Italy 

and I too got up. Hurriedly I dressed and ran 
just as fast as I could in order to get to the job 
on time. I was hoping that foreman might have 
got over his anger and would give me some other 
work that I could do. It was just about one 
minute after seven when I came running up 
breathlessly. The last man had not yet picked 
his tools. 

The foreman eyed me steadily and then said, 
“You are too late. If you want to work come 
at noon.” 

“But listen,” I said quietly, “why must I lose 
five hours? If I am too late for seven o’clock 
can’t I start at eight?” 

He insisted, “No! I said noon.” And he 
turned his broad back to me. From the tone 
of his voice and his demeanor I could see that, 
king-like, he had placed himself up in a tower of 
caprice—this ignorant man who had power over 
men. So, without adding any more futile words 
I did the only thing possible; slowly I walked 
back to the shanty and waited for noon. 

Noon came. A distant whistle blew beyond 
some trees and then died out as if it were the 
last breath of silence. The sky had cleared and 
only a vague mist was blazing around the sun. 
Again I started out for the job, walking quickly 
through the throbbing brightness of the day. 
My wounded hand was very much swollen; I 
127 


Pascal D'Angelo 

had tightened a handkerchief soaked in peroxide 
around it. 

I was badly in need of money and realized 
that I had to submit under any circumstances. 
As soon as it was time to resume work I planted 
myself meekly before Domenick. 

But he, without any human consideration, 
said, “Take your shovel, go there with the others 
and mix the concrete!” 

“But no,” I interrupted gently, “I came here 
to see if you have any job that I can do.” And 
I held out my swollen, bandaged hand. “Will 
you give me a job as water-boy? I can do that 
easily.” 

Apathetically he answered, “No. If you can’t 
use a shovel then go home and stay there until 
your hand is healed. That’s all.” And with 
that, he went back to his work of watching the 
gang of workers. For an instant my thoughts 
were in a whirl. That is why many foremen 
carry revolvers on the job. Then slowly I left 
the spot and began to plod my way home, if I 
could call that hovel “home.” 

I still remembered vividly—everybody remem¬ 
bered it—the heart-breaking times of the pre¬ 
vious year, the long days out of a job when in¬ 
defatigable search was only rewarded by the 
repeated “No, no.” I was without money and in 
debt; otherwise I wouldn’t have cared so much. 

128 


Son of Italy 

Night and inevitable darkness came, and the 
tired workers returned home sullenly, like wild 
beasts toward their den. They divided them¬ 
selves into many groups, and each group began 
its own fire on the bare field in front of the 
shanty. I sat on a boulder quietly watching 
them, my wounded hand on my knee. Every 
now and then I would look at it tenderly like 
some mongrel who gently licks its wounded paw. 

Now all the various fires began to glimmer and 
crackle, and the tongues of bright flames licked 
the velvet night. Some men were coming 
duskily with wood; some went for water; there 
was the welcome sound of pots; one man in 
each group chopped wood in the glow of the 
hungry fire. There were also a few among us 
who had no group to co-operate with and would 
hardly be getting our half-cooked supper before 
half past ten. And by then we would be so tired 
that with the pot still boiling on the two stones 
and the steam pouring up we would probably be 
half asleep. And many a man has lost his supper 
because the fire galloped along freely while he 
nodded. And finally when the smoke and bad 
odor awoke him the supper is hopelessly burned 
in the dirty pot. And many a time, tired and 
mad, a man has gone to sleep without eating. 

The night was beautiful. The stars were like 
exquisite, happy, living spirits giving their bright 
129 


Pascal D'Angelo 

laughter to the silent night. A few were begin¬ 
ning to munch their food. The rest were moving 
about or waiting. In spite of the soft weather 
they all seemed to be in ill humor. The night 
before, when coming into the shanty all wet, 
shouting and stamping about, they had been 
much more lively. And though not one of them 
said a word, it seemed that the balmy summer 
night had awakened deep in their hearts the 
vision of another land, lovely and balmy and 
calm. A land that doesn’t know any such things 
as foremen, in small towns where one is never 
among strangers and people help one another. 

While I was sitting there, along came a young 
fellow called Tony. He was the one who had 
asked me how I felt the night before, in the 
shanty. He was short and slender and had 
bright black eyes and wrinkled face when he, 
smiled. Said he, “Why don’t you go and see 
some other foreman for a job?” There were 
several scattered here and there each of them 
taking care of a different phase in the construc¬ 
tion. These foremen boarded at various farms 
conveniently near the work. They got good 
wages and bonuses for watching us. They also 
put in time for us all and short-paid the men. 
Their food was ready for them at night and their 
beds were soft and clean. And we who did the 
work slept uncleanly in human sties. 

130 


Son of Italy 

I decided to follow Tony’s advice, and started 
out immediately. 

As I went down the road the moon arose and 
shone on the exquisite summer night. The warm 
wind came soft and steadily, the road gleamed 
delicately, and on the embankments to one side 
the cascades of dried loam appeared of fragile 
gold. There were not many trees around, but 
long stretches of indistinct fields lifting into 
nowhere. 

Just then I noticed, stumbling a short dis¬ 
tance ahead of me the big foreman Domenick 
who had caused me so much trouble. He was 
probably drunk. He had struck up a friendship 
with a woman in another farmhouse and was 
probably returning from her place. Immediately 
a fury such as I had never known before flared 
up in me. I hurried. Then I paused. But I have 
always abhorred violence. And a sudden pain 
from my swollen hand streaked through my 
being. 

Just then, as I hesitated I felt a hand on my 
shoulder, not heavy, and gently laid. With a 
start I turned. It was old Michele who worked 
with some other foreman. He was also an 
Abbruzzese, but he came from the bright Adriatic 
coasts where groves of lemons and oranges grow 
right to the edge of the cliffs that overhang the 
sea. He had not spent his young manhood in 
131 


Pascal D'Angelo 

this wretched endless labor and degradation 
among strangers. And his eyes were bright as 
if in them were still gleaming the hopes of youth. 
But now he was old and he liked drink. 

He called me by name, “And where are you 
going, boy?” He was an intelligent man and 
spoke in excellent Italian. He had worked on 
our gang for a week and often mentioned Dante 
whom I thought was an ancient king. But now, 
old, the foreman took him on more in pity than 
anything and because he could talk so nicely to 
them. 

I showed Michele my wounded hand and told 
him my predicament. He now spoke in his soft 
Abbruzzese dialect that is so much like ours of the 
uplands, “Boy,” he said, “a stupid world drove 
nails through other hands—other hands.” 

I didn’t know what he was talking about. But 
at times afterwards the image of that aimless old 
man has come before me like a frightful specter 
and at times like an alluring hope. 

He laughed and took a hearty leave of me. I 
hurried along. Domenick had long since dis¬ 
appeared. Some lights of the houses gleamed 
around a turn of the road. There was a living 
haze around. And suddenly I felt the voluptuous 
summer night embracing me mother-like, and 
amazing with love. And my heart ached for 
home. And I dreamed of the moonrise over the 
132 


Son of Italy 

rugged peaks of the eastern mountains when in 
among the black pinnacles are cups of molten 
silver overflowing and everybody looks up with¬ 
out knowing why. 

But I was out to get a job. I shook my head 
at all these useless thoughts, and continued my 
way. Finally I reached the first farmhouse. The 
foreman came out. He told me his gang already 
had a water-boy, and shut the door. The second 
one, on a more distant farm, said that his gang 
was too small to have one. This was a he. Com¬ 
pletely discouraged, I decided that it was useless 
to go and see the third foreman who lived further 
down the long endless road. So I returned to 
the sty. I felt lost. 

When I crossed the well-worn threshold one 
of the men put down his pipe and asked, 
“Hello! did you get any place?” He was a 
loud-mouthed, but good-natured Neapolitan 
whom I hardly knew. 

I shook my head. 

There was another older man sitting on a box 
near the door, and he asked, also in Neapolitan, 
“ What has he been looking for? ” This man was 
a stranger to me. 

The first fellow, who must have been quite 
familiar with him, turned and said loudly, “Why 
I ’ll tell you. First of all you foremen and bosses 
seem to think that you are gods and kings around 
133 


Pascal D'Angelo 

here. Why, look at this lad; yesterday he got 
hurt on the job; and his hand is still bleeding 
and swollen. He wants a light job that he can 
do; and nobody wants to give him any. That 
dog Domenick over there told him that he must 
wait until his hand is healed so he can use a 
shovel. But if he came out here without money 
—what the devil is he going to eat in the mean¬ 
while? You know yourself how a man can be in 
a hole at times.” 

So I discovered that this stranger was a fore¬ 
man in the excavation gang. He seemed not 
so bad as the others. He had just dropped 
around to have a chat with his fellow-townsman, 
luckily for me. 

“Well, boy,” he began half sympathetically, 
“come over to my gang to-morrow morning, 
south of here.” 

The next morning I arose feeling a little more 
certain and encouraged. I removed the hand¬ 
kerchief from my hand and put on a cleaner one, 
I tried to fry a couple of eggs in an old greasy 
pan. Then I took a half loaf of stale bread, 
split it, weakly, and put the half-fried eggs in 
between the pieces. I searched around for a 
piece of paper but could find none. I was in a 
hurry, the men were leaving, and I had to go 
further than they. Quickly I drew my other 
handkerchief from my pocket. It was still dirty 
134 


Son of Italy 

with the blood that had oozed from my hand 
the day before. I wrapped the pieces of stale 
bread and the two fried eggs in it. And I took 
it with me as my lunch for noon. 

So I worked every day with this new gang, 
carrying pail after pail of water to the men, who 
drank like mules. I had to go far off for the 
water and was unable to shift the heavy pail 
from one hand to the other. At times I had to 
pause on my way back; but this foreman seemed 
to be a little more considerate than the other, 
though he had his defects. 

I worked there for about two weeks. My 
hand was not yet well healed. Then came the 
fortnightly pay-day. We were all waiting 
eagerly and thinking of the hour when the auto¬ 
mobile with meats and vegetables would pass 
and we could buy something good. But when 
the usual hour for our money approached the 
pay-master failed to appear. An hour later one 
of the foremen who looked anxious, announced 
that the contractor had sent a telegram saying 
that he could not come that day but would be 
around to pay us about a day or two later. The 
approval was unanimous. We all went back to 
work happily, and eager to finish out that day 
like excited children waiting for a holiday. 

About three o’clock in the afternoon the next 
day we saw a crowd getting together down the 
135 


Pascal D'Angelo 

road. Someone came running up saying that 
another telegram had come. We all hurried 
over, the foreman first. The superintendent 
was there, white-faced. He read the telegram 
to us; then he explained that the contractor had 
gone bankrupt and that we didn’t need to work 
out the day. The foremen crowded around him 
and started a hot argument. 

Then, we all struck in despair. Like a flock 
of betrayed sheep we returned to the huge, barn- 
like shanty foolishly questioning one another. 
What could we do? 

Some who had money or could get a loan re¬ 
turned to New York. Others went around beg¬ 
ging the farmers nearby to give them work for 
the necessary fare. And I was there without 
money, and with a wounded hand, feeling full 
remorse for having made this newest change 
from my previous place. 

But first, while most of the men were cursing 
eloquently a few of us had to sit down and laugh 
at one another. 


136 


Chapter XII 


T hat night I lingered a long time outside the 
shanty, thinking. And darkness made the 
vast solitudes of heaven populous with 

stars. 

At first my mind was turbulent. 

And I thought to myself, “Why, I am nothing 
more than a dog. A dog. But a dog is silent 
and slinks away when whipped, while I am filled 
with the urge to cry out, to cry out disconnected 
words, expressions of pain—anything—to cry 
out!” 

I looked around. I felt a kinship with the 
beautiful earth. She was like some lovely hard¬ 
hearted lady in velvets and gaudy silks—one 
whom we could gaze at in admiration, but never 
dare approach. I felt a power that was forcing 
me to cry out to this world that was so fair, so 
soft and oblivious of our pains and petty sorrows. 
Then I had to laugh to myself. “After all,” I 
thought, “what are my tiny woes to the eternal 
beauty of those stars, of these trees and even 
this short-lived grass?” 

For a long time I paced the soft green in 
front of our shanty. Then I entered. The men 
137 


Pascal D'Angelo 

inside were grumbling mournfully to one another, 
barely visible in the gloom. I had resigned my¬ 
self to my fate. I was a poor laborer—a dago, 
a wop or some such creature—in the eyes of 
America. Well, what could I do? 

Nothing. 

Thereafter, for a long while until my numbed 
soul was again awakened, my prime interests 
were food and jobs. First of all I had to escape 
back to headquarters in New York. My credit 
was very bad. 

I left the shanty with a couple of others; and 
we began to trudge aimlessly down the long 
road. At several farmhouses we paused to ask 
for work. None of the farmers seemed to care 
to give us any. 

“What are you going to do?” asked a young 
bright-faced lad. 

“Walk,” grumbled my other companion, a 
Sicilian. 

And walk we did. That night we slept in a 
most beautiful country side. But the mosqui¬ 
toes and the gathering damp prevented our ad¬ 
miring the splendor of the broad starlit night. 

Rising a little stiff-jointed the next morning 
we walked on. We were hungry; for a drink of 
water at a clear spring had not done much to 
soothe us. We had a little money between us, 
and on reaching a placid hamlet nestled amid 
138 



Son of Italy 

soft green hills we made, a quick run on the 
general store. 

And who should be conducting the store but 
a paisano of mine! We shook hands long and 
vigorously and in a few minutes I was giving 
him a detailed account of everything that had 
passed in our village from the time he had come 
to America to the day, years later, when I left. 

This good fellow-townsman of mine made the 
three of us sleep in his house that night. In real 
beds, too. And the next day he even loaned us 
the fare for New York, which I dutifully re¬ 
turned in time, as I hope my two companions 
did. 

Back again to the railroad yard in Shady Side 
I went, humbly begging for a job. Fortunately 
for me, they needed men. And so it was that 
after my disastrous trip, I was again an inhabi¬ 
tant of our old box car. 

Little by little a few other fellow-townsmen 
drifted back from unsuccessful jobs, and our 
original gang was in a way re-established. 

Strange to say, I had become light-hearted 
after my troubles. Foremen would shout at me, 
and I laughed as soon as their backs were turned. 
I didn’t care. I had resigned myself to the 
gradual eking out of my life. Work and food. 

Up on Hudson Heights, on top of the Pali¬ 
sades, was a boarding house kept by a “pai- 
139 


Pascal D'Angelo 

sana.” And there I would spend the evenings, 
joking and fooling. I walked up and down with 
a broad smile on my face. And it was just by 
accident, and from this same sense of joking 
that my life took an upward turn. 

First of all, a crowd of Mexican laborers were 
brought up from the south to work with us in 
the yard. At first they were kept separated 
from us, living in long shanties. But gradually 
a general mingling of laborers took place and 
we fraternized wonderfully with them. And I 
found some of them real gentlemen. There was 
one, a wiry young man, who had been with 
Villa and had been taken prisoner by the Ameri¬ 
cans. Besides Spanish he could speak a strange 
Indian language that sounded very queer to me. 
That winter he and another older man came to 
live in our box car and our quarters, already 
crowded, became packed. They were lively fel¬ 
lows and would sing and play on a discordant 
guitar. Then at times the older one, Don Tomas, 
would start off reminiscing and put us all to sleep 
with his monotonous semi-comprehensible 
stories. 

I began to learn some Spanish from these two 
Mexicans. The younger one received a Spanish 
weekly from some town in Texas. To my amuse¬ 
ment he would sit hours at a time reading it. 
Little by little I became interested in the paper, 
140 


Son of Italy 

and tried to pick out words that were like Italian. 
I had gotten to think of a newspaper as some¬ 
thing to start a fire with or to wrap objects in. 
But now I began to read again—very little at 
first, I must confess. Somehow, I found English 
more to my liking than Spanish. And about 
once a week I even bought an English newspaper 
to look at. There was very little in them that 
I could understand, even though I spent many 
a puzzled hour trying to decipher the strange 
words. When I did learn a word and had dis¬ 
covered its meaning I would write it in big 
letters on the mouldy walls of the box car. And 
soon I had my first lesson in English all around 
me continually before my eyes. 

One day a friend of mine who was a bartender 
in one of the many saloons that fined River Road 
took me to an Italian vaudeville show in a the¬ 
ater on the Bowery, New York. Included in 
the program was a short farce. I heard it and 
decided to myself that I could do better. 

I went home and tried to write something 
after work. I began it in Italian, but unable to 
manage the language, on a sudden thought I 
decided to attempt it in English. After a few 
Sundays of hard work I had about three closely 
written pages of the most impossible English 
one could imagine. In triumph, I showed it to 
a couple of brakemen. They laughed long and 
141 


Pascal D'Angelo 

loud. There was some doubt whether it was the 
jokes or the manhandled English which caused 
their hilarity. However, I gave myself the 
benefit of the doubt, and agreed with myself 
that I could write English. 

Though I have long since burned most of 
these “prehistoric” attempts at English, I still 
have a few among my papers of which the fol¬ 
lowing is an example: 

A farmer had not bean in this city very long beefore he 
failed in love with sumthing. And this sumthing happen 
to be a wooman whoo disliked him just as passionately he 
liked her. Now, please do not think that this tuirns out 
to be a joke. Farther from it. This is a seerious story 
in witch throbs the most violent of human passions. The 
life of an unfortunate farm swolled up by the whirlpulls 
of evil. Revealing the futile struggles of a mother who 
fites to save her son drunkard by liquor which he had not 
yet drunk. He was like a drunken staggering alung the 
city streets and falls in some undignfied gutter out of 
which he emerges with his face embellished by mud and 
clothes smelling with heretofour unknown perfumes, made 
out of the too old manure and many other effective in¬ 
gredients pertaining thereto. 

He knelt beefore the wooman he lovd. Being largely 
dispose to obesity (fatness) whenver she moved away— 
which she did it on purpose—he would go after her (walk¬ 
ing) on his knees. Most people become eloquent when 
drunken or in love and this farmer was not therefour 
exseption, “I love you” be begined, “I love you so much. 
I love youl Please come near I come nearer. You are 
142 



Son of Italy 

my hope, my quween, my all! You are like a goddes 
beefore witch I am never tired of kneeling. You are the 
most beautful wooman in the world you are moor beautful 
then beauty. More beautful then one of our newly 
washed pig!” she went way and he called her back “At 
least help me to git up if you don want marry me.” she 
went and he had a hard difficult job to get up. 

So I began to write jokes in “English,” most 
of them of my own invention or paraphrased 
from some paper. My jokes became known 
around the yard as great curiosities and things 
to laugh at. Several good-natured lads who 
worked there even brought me writing paper so 
that I could put down a few jokes for them. 
The things I wrote were not refined at all, but 
only of the type for my class of people. 

Later, when I had learned to manage the 
English language a little better and could write 
with some degree of clarity, I put a prize of five 
cents on some good jokes. That is, if they 
could keep a straight face while reading a little 
collection of jokes that I presented them I would 
give them a nickel. But of course they always 
refused the nickel. Thus was my first climax 
in the r6le of English author. 

One day I bought a small Webster’s dictionary 
for a quarter (second-hand, if not third), half 
torn. But I thought I had gotten a treasure for 
the price. And I proceeded to memorize it. 
143 


Pascal D'Angelo 

Thereafter I was continually going around the 
yard using the most unheard-of English words. 
But, insistently, I made them understand what 
I meant by spelling each word or writing them 
on a railroad tie. 

From that time on I was continually asking 
questions and writing jokes and riddles—which 
were for me the heights of intellectual attain¬ 
ment. 

One glorious winter night I was coming back 
toward the box car from a trip to Hudson 
Heights. With me were a couple of brakemen 
who were on a night shift and were going to 
work. They were young light-hearted Ameri¬ 
can lads, always ready to joke with me. 

I looked up. The sky was thick with stars. 
I remarked, “The stars are marching over the 
deep night. With whom are they going to 
war?” 

“Eh? With whom . . . ?” they asked. 

“With the emperor of Eternity.” 

“And who is he?” 

“Death,” I said. 

They both laughed and took pains to make 
me understand that I was crazy. I walked 
ahead to my box car. 

Shortly after this I began to project—am¬ 
bitiously—a heart stirring tragedy. There was 
a small hall in back of one saloon on River 
144 


Son of Italy 

Road owned by a Hungarian whose daughter I 
often spoke with. They were not bad people 
either, and she had beautiful blue eyes. Vaguely 
I made plans for producing a soul-rending 
show there, and charging admission, and making 
a good deal of money. Of course, I was to be 
the author of the sad play. 

Now, just because I knew so little about the 
city, I determined to put my scene in the great 
metropolis. And the play was to start with a 
poor outcast who had to sleep in the subway. 
But when I sat down to write the speech of this 
poor being whose rest is disturbed by the 
rumbling trains, I didn’t know what to say. 
Accordingly, I decided to investigate and spend 
a night in the subway, which I did very success¬ 
fully in the matter of sleep. And I never wrote 
the sad tragedy, either. 

But work, continual, hard, fatiguing work, 
made my attempts at writing few and short 
lived. I always was and am a pick and shovel 
man. That’s all I am able to do, and that is 
what I am forced to do, even now. Work with 
my arms. 

Wrecks in the yard were a daily occurrence. 
I could hardly concentrate my mind, when a 
man would come shouting, “ All out! A wreck! ” 
in the tunnel or away down the tracks toward the 
sugar refineries. Out I would have to go. And 
145 


Pascal D'Angelo 

in a few minutes I would be starting long spells 
of intense, hurried labor to clear away the wreck¬ 
age or repair the damaged tracks, in the red 
glow of flickering lanterns. 

The superiority of my English was first rec¬ 
ognized by the Italian laborers of my gang. 
Then brakemen and conductors who were 
practically all Americans began to notice me. 
And finally rumors of my accomplishments 
reached even the yard officials. I became quite 
celebrated in the Shady Side yard of the Erie 
Railroad as “that queer Italian laborer.” 

Then a group of young brakemen began a 
campaign to put down my little local fame. 
What they did was to bring new and difficult 
words every morning for me to define. Usually 
they would come about half an hour before 
working time, and cornering me would ask the 
meaning of some difficult word. If I could 
answer, all was well and they kept judiciously 
quiet for the rest of the day. But if I failed, 
then they would make it hot for me. 

When noon came they would call me over to 
the space in front of the office where clerks, 
yard officials and girls were. And there they 
would, with plenty of noise, try to show me up 
to those who liked me. 

But their efforts and mental ambushes were 
all useless—as useless as I could make them. 
146 


Son of Italy 

One day they brought me before the whole crowd 
just to have me ridiculed, perhaps because they 
were high school lads. They gave me five words 
to define and I only knew the meaning of three. 
Throwing up their hands they began to proclaim 
themselves victorious. 

But I calmly gave them two words that they 
had never heard of. Then I bet them that I 
could give them ten words and two more for 
good measure none of which they could 
understand. 

I began, “Troglodyte,” “sebaceous,” “wen,” 
“helot,” “indeciduity,” “murine,” “bantling,” 
“ubiquity,” “clithrophobia,” “nadir,” and in¬ 
stead of adding two for good measure I added 
seven to make their debacle more horrible. 
And with a pencil against the office facade I 
wrote the seven words so that everyone might 
see their eternal defeat, “abettor,” “caballine,” 
“phlebotomy,” “coeval,” “octroon,” “risible,” 
“anorexia,” “arable,” then to complete, I 
added, “asininity.” The defeat of these edu¬ 
cated youths was, is and will be an eternal one? 
because there is no other pick and shovel man 
that can face them like that. 

From the day of that triumph they nicknamed 
me “solution,” and we all became good friends. 

And so the months passed, with plenty of 
joking and foolishness and no end of work. 

147 


Pascal D'Angelo 

But at times I would stand in front of the 
box car on a clear night. Around would be the 
confusion, whistles, flashes and grinding sounds 
of the never-ending movement in the yard. I 
would steal a glance up at the stars. The stars 
have always been the wonder of my life. I had 
but lately learned, to my utter surprise, that 
there were other worlds besides this earth. And 
I had also discovered in a newspaper article that 
the stars were other suns with unseen worlds 
around them. And as I gazed upward I thought 
that perhaps there were other eyes in those 
viewless worlds that were gazing wondering in 
my direction. And how our glances must have 
met in the black mid-darkness of the infinite. 

Such reveries were always broken by a rough 
shout from some of my fellow laborers to “come 
in and go to sleep!” 


148 


Chapter XIII 


D uring the summer of 1919 I began to hear 
much about “Aida,” but I did not know 
exactly what it was. Federico up on Hud¬ 
son Heights had been to see it; but he was unable 
to tell me much about it except that there was 
a fine parade in it. 

About the same time I happened to glance 
over an Italian newspaper and saw an adver¬ 
tisement that this opera was to be represented 
in the open air at the Sheepshead Bay race track. 
I decided to go and hear it. I went there by 
asking my way right and left, for I knew nothing 
about the intricacies of Brooklyn. 

And there in the middle of the confusion that 
attended the performance, I succeeded in worm¬ 
ing my way to a seat right next to the orchestra, 
where my ears were eloquently feasted. 

And all at once I felt myself being driven 
toward a goal. For there was revealed to me 
beauty, which I had been instinctively following, 
in spite of my grotesque jokes and farces. The 
quality of beauty that is in “Aida” I have found 
only in the best of Shelley and perhaps Keats. 
There were parts of such overwhelming loveli¬ 
ness that they tore my soul apart. At times, 
149 


Pascal D'Angelo 

afterwards, when on the job amid the confusion 
of running engines, car screams, and all kinds of 
bad noises, I heard those supreme melodies 
around me. I felt the impulse to rush home to 
our box car and compose another Aida, even 
though I did not know one note from another, 
as I still don’t know. And music, which I 
adore, is a language I have yet to learn. 

About that time some of the men who lived 
in the box car left for Italy, and the others went 
to more lucrative jobs in the nearby factories. 
The Mexicans had all left a few months before, 
and as a consequence, I found myself alone in 
the box car with my dictionary, papers, six 
overcoats, a stove, two beds and a collection of 
broken pots. 

During the general shake-up a new foreman 
was hired, and he came to live in a more sub¬ 
stantially built shed next to the box car. This 
new foreman was a short noisy person with 
small black eyes and a round face. We had 
many good-natured arguments, and at times, 
starting with jests, we almost ended with blows. 

In the evenings when the shadows of the Palis¬ 
ades had swept past us, we would sit in front of 
our strongholds and say bad things about each 
other. Then he would go off to court loudly a 
young lady some of whose relatives gave him 
a good beating shortly afterwards. And I would 
150 


Son of Italy 

dig up my precious papers and dictionaries and 
write. At times, when he was ready to go, along 
would come somebody to shout that there was 
a wreck in the tunnel or down the lines toward 
the factories. And then we would hunt as many 
of the gang as possible and start working. Or 
sometimes I would be alone writing when the 
calamitous news would come. And then if it 
was very bad weather I would tell them where 
to find the foreman and make my escape up 
River Road. 

During this time I was very anxious to write 
an opera, as I still am. The only trouble was 
my ignorance of music. All I could do was to 
take the ferry across and walk through New York 
often in the evenings and on Sundays, flushed, 
and wondering what I should do. 

One fine Sunday afternoon I happened to see 
a sign in front of a building saying that there 
was a music school upstairs where they taught 
harmony and counterpoint. So I went up. The 
door was closed and I came down slowly. A 
man was standing in the hallway, Hibernian of 
features. 

“The music school is closed, I suppose?” I 
began. 

“It certainly is,” he answered. “What do 
you want? I work there.” 

I asked him how much they charged, but he 

151 


Pascal D'Angelo 

didn’t know. Then I asked how long they took 
to teach music, and still he didn’t know. Finally, 
in desperation, I asked him if he had heard of 
“Aida.” ‘Tve heard of it,” he said hesitat¬ 
ingly, but you should go to see the “Bohemian 
Girl.” 

After a while I took leave of him and walked 
along. There was another smaller sign in front 
of a private house a few blocks away and I went 
up and rang the bell. A lady came to the door, 
opened her eyes in horror and almost fainted on 
seeing me. And I believe I must have looked 
very ferocious, for my suit was quite torn, my 
shirt dirty, I was collarless, and my shoes were 
falling apart. Then a man came to the door 
whom, I presumed, was the teacher. 

“Good morning,” said I, “Do you teach 
harmony?” 

“No.” 

“But,” I insisted, “your sign says you do.” 

“Perhaps,” he said sharply, “What music do 
you know?” 

“Nothing,” I said ruefully. 

“Well, my good fellow, you’d better learn 
music before trying to take up harmony.” 

“How can I? What must I do?” I asked in 
despair. 

“Learn some instrument—the piano—” and 
he slammed the door in my face. 

152 


Son of Italy 

After this rebuff I lost a good deal of my ardor 
for almost two hours. Then, passing a pawnshop 
I saw an honest-looking mandolin for sale in the 
window. I went in and haggled with the old 
man until he gave it to me for two dollars. And 
home I brought my trophy in triumph. 

Thereafter at all sorts of uncanny hours one 
could hear weird plucking sounds coming from 
my box car. I was anxious to learn, and I also 
bought one of those short roads to melody which 
teach you to butcher some poor music by fol¬ 
lowing a series of numbers. So, night and 
day, whenever I had time, and when by all 
rights I should have been sleeping, I was at 
my mandolin, annoying the atmosphere. I also 
annoyed someone else besides the clear Jersey 
air. 

After the first few nights of music, the fore¬ 
man’s small black eyes would narrow cunningly 
as he looked at me. And by the end of the fourth 
day he accused me point-blank of conjuring to 
destroy his sleep and drive him into a madhouse. 
All that evening I had been struggling with a 
hapless melody from “II Trovatore.” I hadn’t 
even thought of him, and I was surprised both at 
his accusation and at his ignorance of music. 
And I told him so. 

After a few more days and arguments, he 
began to look very malignantly at me, and I 
153 


Pascal D'Angelo 

began to watch out for trouble. Finally, a week 
passed, and then another. I am sure he would 
have fired me, had he dared. But he was a new 
man in the yard. And he also knew that practi¬ 
cally everybody in the yard office was a friend of 
mine. So he let things drift along. 

On the third Sunday he came and knocked at 
the door of the box car. 

“What do you want?” I shouted. 

“I want to speak to you just a minute.” 

I opened the door slowly, ready for an attack. 
The foreman stood outside in the sunshine smil¬ 
ing broadly. 

“Hello,” he said softly, “I want to ask a favor 
of you.” 

“What?” 

“That’s a fine mandolin you have,” he began. 
“How much do you want for it?” 

“It’s a good mandolin,” I said, stepping back, 
“and cheap for five dollars.” 

His eyes twinkled. “They surely robbed you 
when you paid one dollar and fifty for it.” 

I was justly shocked and grieved at his slight 
of my mandolin. And after several compromises 
in prices I sold it to him for three dollars and 
fifty cents. I was elated and he was smiling 
strangely. He handed over the money and I 
gave him the instrument. 

Quickly the foreman brushed his fingers across 
154 


Son of Italy 

the strings. Then with a good swing he smashed 
the mandolin against the door of my box car. I 
was surprised. 

“Now I can enjoy at least one Sunday in 
peace,” he remarked dryly as he walked into his 
shack. But his peace was costly, especially as I 
went and bought a guitar with the money. 

After a while I gave up music as being an 
impossible job, and turned my spare moments 
toward literature. 

And I wrote and wrote. At the same time I 
wrote many “poems” to my beloved of the 
saloon, or rather to an idealization of her, and 
she always served me with larger sandwiches and 
fuller glasses of beer. At night several of my 
fellow-workers would gather there and read a 
newspaper and discuss the woes of the world. 
Occasionally, still dazed from my “poetry,” I 
would drop in, pat the cat, smile at the girl and 
argue with some one or other. 

I once asked a few of my brighter fellow-workers 
if they cared to read something that sounded like 
the following poem: which was afterwards printed 
in The Bookman: 

SONG OF LIGHT 

The sun robed with noons stands on the pulpit of heaven 
Like an anchorite preaching his faith of light to listening 
space. 


155 


Pascal D'Angelo 

And I am one of the sun’s lost words, 

A ray that pierces through endless emptiness on emptiness 
Seeking in vain to be freed of its burden of splendor. 

I was strangely surprised by their unanimous 
approval. 


156 


Chapter XIV 


I cannot think of the old box car without a 
feeling of regret. It was a wonderful place 
for studying the ways of insects. Whenever 
it rained, water streamed in on all sides. But it 
was cosy; we had a fine big stove and plenty of 
coal which we picked up from the ground after 
quitting time. 

New men were hired; some merry old fellows 
came to live in the box car. Life had taken on a 
lively aspect. Yet I was dissatisfied. For I had 
been thrilled by a new discovery—my senses 
were all atremble—I had found Shelley. 

I had already learned that there was a public 
library nearby in Edgewater. Going there, I was 
kindly received in spite of my broken English and 
the ragged appearance of my working clothes. 
And it was there that, while browsing among 
books, I finally wandered upon “Prometheus 
Unbound.” In a flash I recognized an appealing 
kinship between the climaxes of “Aida” and the 
luminous flights of that divine poetry. 

Again I felt an urge to express myself, to cry 
out my hopes and dreams to this lovely unheed- 
157 


Pascal D'Angelo 

ing world. Music was impossible for me; but 
Shelley I could proceed to emulate almost imme¬ 
diately. As soon as I returned to the box car I 
burned almost everything I had written up to 
that time. Jokes, disjointed scenes and humor¬ 
ous “poems” all went into the cleansing flame. 

I had an enormous knowledge of disjointed 
words and phrases and my mind was filled with 
fantastic impressions of life. It was hard for me 
to put my words and thoughts in order. Gram¬ 
mar gave me plenty of trouble. Rhyme stumped 
me. Avidly I read all kinds of poetry, during my 
spare time, and discovered that rhyme was not 
absolutely essential to poetic utterance. I also 
discovered, very early in my career, that a good 
deal of what goes under the name of poetry is 
really trash. So from the first I tried to avoid 
echoing the things I had read, and be on the 
safe side. 

Meanwhile I became the cause of considerable 
argument among my fellow-workers. Some main¬ 
tained that my knowledge of English would help 
me to advance in this world and others insisted 
that a man who was born a laborer could never 
rise. The most hopeful among them would pre¬ 
dict that I might succeed—eventually becoming 
a foreman! I wonder what they would have 
thought had they known that I was slowly but 
surely deciding upon a literary career! 

158 


Son of Italy 

One of the newer men in my gang, Felice, an 
old man who had been strong in his youth but 
was now a physical wreck, told me one day, 

“Pascal, what hope is there for any laborer in 
this world? Look at me: besides being an illit¬ 
erate, I am as you see me. I walk like a duck; 
with a deformed hunchback for which one night 
I was nearly shot between the grain and chemical 
cars because in the dark one of the new yard 
watchmen thought I was taking away some valu¬ 
able thing on my back. My hands are twisted 
and couldn’t even write an “0” with a table 
glass. And you, who they say can write English 
—what good does it do you to know the language 
of America while working here? You are not get¬ 
ting a cent more than a parrot like me who goes 
wherever they take him. You live in the same 
box car. You eat the same food. And if you 
stay here long enough you will become the same 
as I. Look at me and you are looking into the 
mirror of your future!” 

I nodded gravely. 

Old Felice continued, “You should get a job in 
some office where you can use your English and 
you can learn more. Think it over, boy.” 

In a rose flush of awakened hopes I dreamed of 
my poetry. I thought of my ambition to write— 
always to write. It must have been a mania with 
me. Just at that time I had written a rough 
159 


Pascal D'Angelo 

draft of a poem whose completed form was later 
printed in a leading magazine: 

In the dark verdure of summer 

The railroad tracks are like the chords of a lyre gleaming 
across the dreamy valley, 

And the road crosses them like a flash of lightning. 

But the souls of many who speed like music on the melo¬ 
dious heart-strings of the valley 
Are dim with storms; 

And the soul of a farm lad who plods, whistling, on the 
lightning road 
Is a bright blue sky. 

My awakened hopes ran high. I grew restless 
on the job. I began to make mistakes, restive 
and annoyed at the chains of physical labor 
around my new-born soul. The realization of 
life had dawned upon me with a startling sud¬ 
denness. 

It was on a November morning in 1919 that 
I made a hasty decision. It was a quick, yet 
inevitable decision. I would give my future a 
chance. I would no longer dream and hope— 
I would act. Hurriedly eager to execute my 
plans before I should change my mind, I went 
to my friend Saverio. 

“Saverio,” I announced, “I am going to leave 
this place. I am going to live in the city and 
write poetry.” 

“Pascal,” he commented, “you will starve.” 
160 


Son of Italy 


“I shall.” 

I reflected: what was one little starvation more 
or less in a man’s life, especially in that of a self- 
anointed poet? Within a few years we would be 
gone, so why not sing our songs in the mean¬ 
while? 

My friend looked sadly at me and slowly 
shook his head, making me understand that we 
of the uneducated class have more relation to 
swine and should therefore keep on nuzzling the 
ground without raising our heads to cast wistful 
glances toward unwritten beauties. 

The next morning, oblivious of the trials ahead 
of me, I came to New York with my tumble- 
down valise in which were being transported my 
shirts, books and a cosmopolitan colony of in¬ 
sects gathered from the various corners of the 
vast Americas. With little misgivings I turned 
my back to the ditches and tracks in order to 
explore a new life. 

When I first arrived in America the city 
through which I had passed had been a vast 
dream whirling around me. Gradually it had 
taken shape and form, but had still remained 
alien to me in spirit. Now, however, as I walked 
through its crowded streets, I felt a sort of kin¬ 
ship with it. I felt that I was an integral part 
of this tremendous, living, bustling metropolis. 

For several days I wandered about, getting 

161 


Pascal D'Angelo 

better acquainted with my chosen abode. I 
felt happy. I had hopes for the future, I had a 
sort of goal, however vaguely defined. “Noth¬ 
ing,” I swore to myself over and over again, 
“will turn me back from my chosen career of 
author, nothing will drive me back before I have 
accomplished something that will justify my 
starting.” 

So, wandering through the metropolis, I 
drifted down to the slums along the Brooklyn 
waterfront. There I could cut my expenses to 
a minimum. I took stock of my earthly posses¬ 
sions, and realized that I was in no position to 
stand a long period of physical idleness. In the 
first impetus of enthusiasm, however, I wrote 
continuously for several weeks. It seemed to 
be a great relief to have all my time free for my 
beloved poetry. 

After a few weeks in this great metropolis I 
wrote a poem called “The City”: 

We who were born through the love of God must die 
through the hatred of Man. 

We who grapple with the destruction of ignorance and the 
creation of unwitting love— 

We struggle, blinded by dismal night in a weird shadowy 
city. 

Yet the city itself is lifting street-lamps, like a million 
cups filled with light, 

To quench from the upraised eyes their thirst of gloom; 

162 


Son of Italy 

And from the hecatombs of aching souls 
The factory smoke is unfolding in protesting curves 
Like phantoms of black unappeased desires, yearning and 
struggling and pointing upward; 

While through its dark streets pass people, tired, useless, 
Trampling the vague black illusions 
That pave their paths like broad leaves of water-lilies 
On twilight streams; 

And there are smiles at times on their lips. 

Only the great soul, denuded to the blasts of reality, 
Shivers and groans. 

And like two wild ideas lost in a forest of thoughts, 

Blind hatred and blinder love run amuck through the city. 

I took this poem and several others which I 
had culled from my growing collection and sent 
them to a magazine which sometimes allows the 
muses a few odd corners. This was my first bom¬ 
bardment upon the editorial citadels. And my 
success was rather assured for I had put two 
stamps upon the envelope with heads of Wash¬ 
ington on them. And if one Washington had 
been such a valiant warrior, I thought in jest, 
then, two should practically overwhelm the edi¬ 
torial fortresses. Thus did I play in this toy 
city amid the vigilant realities of this toy 
universe. 

Thereafter, every evening, on coming home I 
guided my steps toward my landlord’s dingy 
room to ask if any letter had come for me. As 
an answer he would shake his head. 

163 


Pascal D'Angelo 

So continuous and anxious were my inquiries 
about the letter that he concluded it must be 
something of great value. Therefore when the 
small, but robust letter came he was tempted 
to investigate. 

Disappointed, and more than a little indig¬ 
nant, at not having found any of the earth’s 
material wealth in it, the landlord brought the 
letter to me, “Here you are, sir, I hope it’s what 
you were expecting.” 

I thanked him and rushed to my room. No 
sooner had I lit the kerosene lamp than I began 
to search the letter for money or for an invita¬ 
tion to call at the editor’s office. Instead I found 
my poems and a printed slip. It was elabo¬ 
rate and diplomatic, courteously thanking me 
for my kindness in allowing the editorial staff to 
consider my poems. I was flattered. I was 
pleased to think that the editors of a large and 
opulent magazine should thank me. 

Immediately I procured two more envelopes, 
filled them with poems and sent them out. 
Without hesitation they were sent back accom¬ 
panied by printed slips. Those editors must 
have strongly believed in accuracy and prompt¬ 
ness. This encouraged me to send out more 
and soon my collection of courteous slips had 
grown to large proportions, since I had begun to 
invade other redoubts. 

164 


Son of Italy 

Gradually I became skeptical about the hon¬ 
eyed phrases. I strongly suspected that there 
was some telepathic communication among the 
magazine editors to drive me and my poems 
from the thresholds of their temples. 

And now I realized that I was merely a small 
drop in the sad whirlpool of literary aspirants. 
In my cold, stoveless, dingy room or in the 
Library, I was alone in my struggle to acquire a 
new language and a new world. But outside of 
that I was one, only one of the millions of literary 
beggars who clog the halls of literature, who 
stand like a sluggish crowd in the way of anyone 
wishing to forge ahead. 

For a while I became discouraged utterly. 
Everyone is in everyone else’s way, I thought. 
There are too many authors, too many poets, 
novelists, dramatists, too many people honestly 
yearning to speak their souls, and this com¬ 
mercial world cannot assimilate them all. 

I went back to work. I found a job in a wild, 
insane shipyard nearby. I was restless. I tried 
to forget poetry, I tried to forget beauty. I 
tried to lead the drab, hard life which it seems 
fate had allotted to me. Days passed, and still 
I toiled. The weeks and then the months passed. 
With a sort of feverish anger I shook my head 
at the thought of a literary career, in spite of all 
that I had said before. But the Enchantress 
165 


Pascal D'Angelo 

would not let me free. I was restless. Some¬ 
thing appeared to be lacking in my life. At 
night when I should have been sleeping I would 
sit up and struggle with my own indecisions. 
My only refuge from my hounding feverish 
thoughts was toil—hard, ceaseless, life-sapping 
toil I rarely spoke to anyone save on the job. 

The winter of 1920 passed and Spring flew by 
in a blaze of soul-torture. It was hard for me to 
combat the spell of beauty. It was hard for me 
to think that I could never succeed. 

One evening late that summer, while wander¬ 
ing aimlessly around I happened to pick up a 
copy of a staid and respectable metropolitan 
newspaper. On the editorial page was a poem 
which struck me as being the most blatant and 
silly trash imaginable. Immediately a sugges¬ 
tive fury blazed in me. My thoughts roared all 
aflame, “ How is it that such stuff is printed while 
I must go pleading in vain from door to door?” 

“ Perseverance 1” answered my own mind, 
“Perseverance! you cannot succeed by slinking 
away from the fight. Keep it up! If such trash 
is printed, then there is hope for your writing.” 

All at once I had to burst out laughing. The 
poet—a lady—had most probably hounded the 
editors until in desperation they had accepted 
her effusions. Good! Then I would hound them 
too! 


166 


Son of Italy 

Decided, encouraged, I went home and cutting 
out the poem pasted it on my door to be forever 
before me as the “horrible example.” 

The next day I quit my job. From now on 
there was to be no turning back. I would ac¬ 
knowledge no defeat. 

Timidly I went to an Italian newspaper, 
hoping that I might find some encouragement 
there from people of my own blood. 

The editor read my poems and commented, 
“We only print works of well-known writers. 
We cannot do anything for you.” 

“Why,” I pleaded, “some American news¬ 
papers pay from $5 to $10; but I ask no price. 
You can give as much as you please.” 

“Ten dollars! We wouldn’t give you even 
ten cents,” he replied. 

I went to other publications and received 
similar receptions. I sent poems to magazines 
in other cities and received the inevitable printed 
slips. One editor did deign to write something 
on the slip and that was a note to please send a 
self-addressed stamped envelope with my contri¬ 
butions. 

It took courage to continue writing in those 
months, but I kept it up. I forced myself to 
believe in eventual success. Whenever I felt 
weakening I would read the poem pasted on the 
door. 


167 


Pascal D'Angelo 

The winter of 1921 was approaching. Times 
were bad. Recognition seemed utterly impos¬ 
sible, in spite of my set resolve. A literary future 
for me was the densest, sunless, moonless, star¬ 
less gloom the human mind could ever conceive. 
How far would my scanty savings of the pre¬ 
ceding months take me? 

I tried to save money in all ways possible. I 
went to live in the cheapest hole that I could 
find in the slums of Brooklyn. It was a small 
room which had previously been a chicken coop 
and wood shack. That hovel was the main 
tryst where all the most undesirable incon¬ 
veniences held their meetings. The entrance to 
it was through a toilet which served ten families 
besides unwelcome strangers and dirty passers- 
by. Often the overflow of that ordure would 
come running beneath the door and stand in 
malodorous pools under my bug-infested Red. 

There was no stove in the room, and many a 
freezing day I had to remain huddled in the 
bed in order to keep warm. The most dys¬ 
peptic and indigestible moments were those 
when I had to shave. I could scarcely shave 
with my overcoat on—which served me as a 
quilt at night and as an overcoat during the 
day. 

All those who knew where I was living could 
hardly refrain from saying, “Are you crazy to 
168 


Son of Italy\ 

live in that room without a stove and toilet 
water always coming in? You will easily get 
sick.” 

I shrugged my shoulders in resignation and 
tried to make them understand that the price 
of a better room was beyond my financial 
compass. 

Meanwhile I would go to the Library—the 
only refuge opened to me—and write. At 
least if my body was living in a world of horror 
I could build a world of beauty for my soul. 

Having little money left I set out to master 
the situation. The easiest thing to cut was 
food. I searched every possible corner for 
cheap food. I went into several bakeries and 
asked for the lowest price on their bread. Too 
high—too high—always too high. But my 
search continued. I went into one place and 
asked the same question. The lady there told 
me, adding, “Unless you want stale bread.” 
I smiled and jested solemnly, “How much 
must I disburse for your stale bread before I can 
proclaim it mine?” 

Open-mouthed she stared at me, though 
she understood “how much.” And I became a 
steady customer for stale bread, although very 
often I would call it “steel bread” which really 
was an appropriate name. 

Poverty, the eternal torturer, tightened its 
169 


Pascal D'Angelo 

hold upon me. As days of hopeless darkness 
followed each other I felt myself constrained to 
cut down expenses in all possible ways. It was 
a war for an ideal. For my part I began to live 
on the most frugal basis imaginable. My daily 
meals during that winter consisted of stale 
bread and cold soup in which I put stale bread 
broken into small pieces and waited until they 
became soft enough to be eaten, costing, in all, 
about ten cents. At times I would get reckless 
and squander a few pennies for bananas—if I 
could get them cheap enough. 

Do not think that I bought those finely 
assorted bananas with which the corner fruit 
stands so allure the passer-by. Not by any 
means. Those which I ate—delicious food— 
were sold to me, not one cent each, but twenty- 
five, and sometimes even more, for a nickel. 
These were not daily occurrences, only Saturdays 
made them possible. One can easily imagine 
in what state of decomposition they were to 
fetch such a low price. For me, in my struggle 
against poverty, they were a rare delicacy. A 
banana vendor once, the first time I approached 
his stand, asked me, “Are you buyin’ this ba¬ 
nanas for your dog?” 

“No,” I replied promptly, “for my ‘wolf.’” 

Several times on my way home with soup I 
would begin to tremble—and there was a good 
170 


Son of Italy 

reason for it—for if the Prohibition agents 
ever inspected my soup they would arrest me. 
Because my soup, in its state of fermentation, 
would far surpass their constitutionalized one- 
half of one per cent. Sometimes besides being 
sour and burnt—at times so badly damaged that I 
had to throw it away and bemoan the nickel which 
I had lost in that bad investment—my soup was 
full of bones—bones that did not belong there. 
Meatless bones, chicken feet which were dead, 
but alive enough to scratch my soul with deep 
humiliation. But the more things turned 
against me, the more I stood my ground. 

I had faith in myself. Without realizing it, 
I had learned the great lesson of America: I 
had learned to have faith in the future. No 
matter how bad things were, a turn would 
inevitably come—as long as I did not give up. 
I was sure of it. But how much I had to suffer 
until the change came! What a thorny, heart¬ 
breaking road it was! 


171 


Chapter XV 


As the winter grew more severe my condition 
became desperate. My books and papers 
were moulding from the damp. I too felt 
that I was mouldering. The sufferings, colds, 
wet and damp were beginning to harm me. 
Many a freezing night, unable to remain in bed 
I had to get up and walk about three miles to 
the Long Island Depot at Flatbush Avenue 
where I might find a little warmth. 

Once I had to stay three days without washing 
because the lavatory pipes were frozen. On 
the morning of the fourth day I thought it was 
worth while going to the Main Library at Forty- 
second Street and Fifth Avenue where I could 
wash not only my hands and face but my hand¬ 
kerchief also. 

I took some stale bread with me and five or 
six bananas, because that was all I had left. 
Wrapping the remainder of the bread, destined 
to last at least two more days, in a sheet of news¬ 
paper; I threw it under the bed. Usually, on 
going out, I would place my bread on the bed 
rather than under, fearing lest the unwelcome 
toilet overflows would pay a visit during my ab- 
172 


Son of Italy 

sence and render it uneatable. But now that 
the pipes were frozen I needed no such pre¬ 
cautions. 

While I was in the public library, several 
hours later, I had occasion to go from the main 
reading room to see about a book in the files 
outside. During my absence some conscientious 
gentleman inspected my overcoat which I had 
left on the arm of my chair believing that the 
library was only frequented by honest people. 

Finding it too old to repay him for the trouble 
of taking it away, he searched the pockets and 
took the few pennies that I had left. 

I was unaware of this until I was approaching 
the subway station, when my hand instinctively 
began to feel for the fare. 

The lady in the booth—though I did not ask 
her for anything—made me understand that the 
B. R. T. was not a philanthropic society. 

I turned away from the booth and went up 
to the street. 

Without wasting more time I set out on my 
long tramp home. It was about half-past ten 
when I left Times Square. The weather was 
somewhat cloudy, though I could see no visible 
signs of either snow or frozen rain. 

“It is not so bad after all,” I thought, “espe¬ 
cially if it does not snow. By two o’clock I 
ought to be in my hovel. Why did I try to go 
173 


Pascal D'Angelo 

in the subway, anyhow? Why was I in such a 
hurry to reach my room? Was there a woman’s 
brightening smile and a child’s love-woven da! 
da! to greet me after their alarm on account of 
my delay? What was there home for me? Only 
cold and overflows. Well, they could overflow 
without me. 

I walked. 

The wind began to make itself more arrogant. 
As I was about to reach Canal Street some cold 
sharp rain began to fall from the sluggish clouds, 
with increasing rapidity. 

Just as I was in the middle of Manhattan 
Bridge the rain and sleet began to pour full 
blast upon the city. My face ached from the 
sharp biting sleet. Two minutes were sufficient 
to get me wet through to the skin. My clothes 
became bright and studded with the frozen rain. 
I could not pause for if I did my water soaked 
underwear would freeze me. I hurried on head- 
bowed. 

Reaching the Long Island Depot on Flatbush 
Avenue I entered in order to warm myself a 
little. I stood there shivering in my cold wet 
clothes. 

Snow could be seen through the glass windows 
pouring down as intense as the clouds above 
that threw it. 

It was about one a. m. Besides feeling cold 
174 


Son of Italy 

and extremely wet, I was hungry. I could not 
go into a restaurant. I did not have a cent. 
Neither could I eat snow. 

After a while I hurried home under the piercing 
blows of the ice-pointed wind. There at least I 
had my stale bread under the bed. It was home 
after all. 

I reached my room a little after two. As 
I opened the door in the dark I could hear a 
splashing on the floor as if water were there. 
The window was open. Snow poured in. The 
children of the neighborhood had opened it dur¬ 
ing my absence in order to look at my books 
and papers. Rain and snow had wet a good half 
of the bed and quilt. Someone had also tried 
to warm the pipes in the lavatory and they had 
burst. Before the water could be turned off 
enough of it had flowed under my bed to spoil 
my stale bread and my extra pair of trousers 
and underwear. 

Half of my bed was wet. I could not use it. 
My underwear was also soaked. The stale bread 
gave such an evil toilet smell that I could not 
eat it in spite of my hunger. Shivering, sleepy, 
hungry, tired, I huddled on the dry end of the 
bed and pressed my face in anguish against the 
quilt. How long, 0 God, how long was this 
going to last? Would I ever get out of this 
gulf of sorrows? 


175 


Pascal D'Angelo 

I must have fallen asleep, for just as the gray 
tumult outside was whitening into dawn, I awoke 
aching and coughing, with fits of fever. I did not 
feel myself able to plunge through the snow¬ 
drifts that filled the streets and so sat shivering 
in my room while the day cleared and an icy 
wind blew against my window. 

What an immense distance stretched between 
me and my goal! What an impossibility it ap¬ 
peared to see even one word of mine in print! 

Somehow, the sufferings and discouragements 
which I received during those terrible months 
only spurred me to greater efforts. Systemati¬ 
cally, I made a list of all the newspapers and 
magazines in New York. And I decided to pay 
personal visits to all of them. I selected about 
a score of my poems and divided them into four 
equal groups so that I could cover several offices 
in one day. My visits to the newspapers proved 
useless and discouraging. Some made me leave 
the poems, saying, 44 You will hear from us soon,” 
though three or four weeks usually passed be¬ 
fore the unfavorable news came. One news¬ 
paper, out of pity, I suppose, offered me a 
dollar for my favorite poems. 

Late in December, while the happy populace 
were beginning their festive squandering, I went 
to the office of a large, internationally known 
newspaper. Downcast and sad, I sat on a chair 
176 


\ 


Son of Italy 

in the receiving room waiting for someone to 
come and reject my poems. All at once a young 
man who was passing, stopped abruptly and 
opened his eyes with amazement at my queer 
presence. 

I rose to my feet and gazed pleadingly at him. 

“What’s the matter, are you sick?” he asked 
in a semi-jesting voice. 

“No, though I have some poems that are from 
lack of recognition.” 

A sardonic grin passed over his face at the 
mention of “poems.” “Well, you are in the 
wrong hospital then, John,” he said, walking on. 

After a minute or two a solemn looking gentle¬ 
man came out to lend dignity and weight to the 
antechamber. 

“What can I do for you?” he inquired as if 
he were the doctor sent out to feel the pulse 
of my poems. I showed him my poems. 

“I am very sorry, sir,” he began austerely, 
“but I can do nothing for you. Our policy, or 
rather the policy of this paper does not enable 
us to print anything except what is written by 
our editorial staff. I wish you luck. Good-bye.” 

Similar receptions did not deter me. There 
was always the goading thought that if ninety- 
nine offices rejected my poems the hundredth 
might accept them. 

When I went home at night, there was nothing 
177 


Pascal D'Angelo 

to cheer me in the freezing, stoveless room, save 
the encouraging thought that I had not yet 
visited all the editorial offices in New York. 
Why then should I buy the coffin before my 
hope was dead? At times, seized by fits of 
enthusiasm, about an imaginary success, I would 
sit down and write, forgetting hunger and cold 
which beset me. 

Toward the end of the year I went into a 
magazine office from which my poems had been 
twice expelled and asked the information girl 
if I could see the editor. I wanted to make sure 
that it was the editor and not the office boy who 
had read my poems. 

“I am not sure, but I’ll try,” she said. 

After a while I was brought into the presence 
of a quiet looking old gentleman around whose 
eyes there seemed to be a touch of sadness. 

In a voice whose harshness startled me, 
coming as it did from such a mild looking man, 
he asked, “Well, what brought you here?” 

I told him that I had come to ask about my 
poems. His office had held them for such a long 
time that I had almost begun to hope for their 
ultimate acceptance, and then they had been 
suddenly returned to me. 

“To tell the truth,” he began “I am editor, 
and the poems which we print are selected by a 
special reader out of the large quantity that 
178 


Son of Italy 

pours into our office. Therefore you can easily 
understand that I have in no wise ever seen 
yours or anybody else’s poems except those 
which the reader hands to me for the magazine. 
And that is about all I have to say. Good day.” 

Such receptions were repeated over and over 
again with sickening monotony. And still I 
persisted. 

During the time I was working in the Under¬ 
cliff yard of the Erie I had written a poem called 
“Light” which summed up my indecisions and 
doubts about the future. And the light had not 
yet come. 

LIGHT 

Every morning, while hurrying along River Road to work, 
I pass the old miser Stemowski’s hut, 

Beside which pants a white perfumed cloud of acacias. 
And the poignant spring pierces me. 

My eyes are suddenly glad, like cloud-shadows when they 
meet the sheltering gloom 

After having been long stranded in a sea of glassy light. 
Then I rush to the yard. 

Rut on the job my mind still wanders along the steps of 
dreams in search of beauty. 

0 how I bleed in anguish! I suffer 

Amid my happy, laughing but senseless toilers! 

Perhaps it is the price of a forbidden dream sunken in the 
purple sea of an obscure future. 

Toward the end of the year, as one of the last 
few hopes, I submitted my poems in a contest 
179 


Pascal D'Angelo 

which “The Nation” was holding. It was a 
desperate move, a clutching at a straw. 

The year ended and no answer came. I became 
anxious; I wanted to know what had befallen my 
poems. I knew that recognition was practically 
impossible. It was a new year of sorrow and 
suffering. As a sort of despairing gesture I sent 
a letter to the editor. 

“To the Editor of The Nation, 

“Dear Sir: 

“I have submitted three poems ‘For The Na¬ 
tion’s Poetry Prize’ within the established 
period as described in the columns of ‘The 
Nation!’ Not having heard anything from your 
editorial office, I would be much obliged if you 
should inform me on the matter. 

“I hope you will consider them from a view¬ 
point of their having been written by one who 
is an ignorant pick and shovel man—who has 
never studied English. If they do not contain 
too many mistakes I must warmly thank those 
friends who have been kind enough to point out 
the grammatical errors. I am one who is strug¬ 
gling through the blinding flames of ignorance to 
bring his message before the public—before you. 
You are dedicated to defend the immense cause 
of the oppressed. This letter is the cry of a soul 
stranded on the shores of darkness looking for 
180 


Son of Italy 

light—a light that points out the path toward 
recognition, where I can work and help myself. 
I am not deserting the legions of toil to refuge 
myself in the literary world. No! No! I only 
want to express the wrath of their mistreatment. 
No! I seek no refuge! I am a worker, a pick and 
shovel man—what I want is an outlet to express 
what I can say besides work. Yes to express all 
the sorrows of those who cower under the crush¬ 
ing yoke of an unjust doom. 

“There are no words that can fitly represent 
my living sufferings. No, no words! Even 
the picture loses its mute eloquence before this 
scene. I suffer: for an ideal, for freedom, for 
truth that is denied by millions, but not by the 
souls who have the responsibility of being hu¬ 
man. For yesterday, New Year’s Day, I only 
had five cents worth of decaying bananas and 
a loaf of stale bread to eat. And to-day: a 
half quart of milk and a stale loaf of bread. All 
for the love of an ideal. Not having sufficient 
bed clothes for a stoveless room like mine, I 
must use my overcoat as blanket at night and 
as a wrinkled overcoat during the day. The 
room is damp—my books are becoming mould¬ 
ered. And I too am beginning to feel the effects 
of it. But what can I do? Without a pick and 
shovel job and without a just recognition? 
And besides the landlady has notified me to 
181 


Pascal D'Angelo 

evacuate her room on or before January the 
tenth. She may have someone who can pay a 
little more than I. So I must go and search for 
another room. Perhaps it will cost more than 
this. How can I afford it? Without work 
and without a recognition that will allow me to 
work? 

“Please consider my condition and the 
quality of the work I submit. Then say if I 
can be helped without any expense on your 
part. You can do—do something for me. 
Even in this horrible and indescribable condi¬ 
tion I am not asking for financial aid. I am 
not asking for pity, nor am I asking for an im¬ 
possibility. I only ask for a simple thing—a 
thing which you are giving away free. While 
you are giving it away free, why not see that it 
goes where it can help the most? I am not 
coveting the prize because of the money. No! 
but because it will give me the recognition that 
I cannot do without. If it’s given to me I can 
go around to all the editors, and I can say to 
them that I have been awarded ‘The Nation’s 
Poetry prize.’ When I say that, they will 
listen to me—they will consider my works— 
they will begin to accept them. Then, domi¬ 
nated by an impulse of encouragement, I will 
write: a novel, two, three, who knows how many! 
But how can I go now without an introduction 
182 


Son of Italy 

of this kind? They don’t hear me. If I ask 
them to see my manuscript they say they are 
busy, or else they let me leave some poems 
which they put hatching oblivion, in an obscure 
corner of their editorialocratic drawers. When 
after a certain time they might accidentally 
happen to see my poems they glance at the name 
and see it’s an unknown one. Therefore they 
return them without much consideration. Must 
it continue like this forever? That is why I 
am asking this help from you. If it is a help 
without expenses then why not help me? If 
the prize is given to a well known writer it does 
not give him the same aid that it gives me. 

“There is no writer who exists under such con¬ 
ditions. Let this prize break those horrible bar¬ 
riers before me, and open a new world of hope! 
Let this prize (even if it is an honorary one) come 
like a bridge of light between me and my await¬ 
ing future. Let me free! Let me free! Free like 
the thought of love that haunts millions of minds. 
If it’s without expenses on your side then, give, 
give me an opportunity. Give me an oppor¬ 
tunity before colds, wet, sleets, and many other 
sufferings will pitilessly distort my physical and 
mental shapes into a monstrous deformity. Give 
me an opportunity while it’s not too late. I can 
work hard and am hoping to make enough money 
to have a musical education. For I want to corn- 
183 


Pascal D'Angelo 

pose music. And yet I do not know the differ¬ 
ence between one note and another. What bars 
me from doing so? 

“Oh! please hear me! Iam telling the truth. 
And yet who knows it? Only I. And who be¬ 
lieves me? Then let my soul break out of its 
chrysalis of forced ignorance and fly toward the 
flower of hope, like a rich butterfly winged with 
a thousand thoughts of beauty. 

“Remember! without any expenses on your 
side you can help me! This is what I want: to 
be one sharer (though honorary) of the prize, the 
honor of the prize, a winner of the prize! For I 
have no friends who can help me in the literary 
world. I am a poor worker but a rich defender 
of truth. 

“0 please! the weights of duty crush me down 
and yet I cannot perform. I am not a spend¬ 
thrift. With a hundred dollars I can live five 
months. I am not asking an impossibility. 

“Lift me, with strength of the prize, out of 
this ignoble gloom and place me on the pulpit 
of light where I too can narrate what the Nature- 
made orator has to say in me.” 

The miracle happened. All at once I found 
myself known and talked about. Almost imme¬ 
diately my plea found a sympathetic response 
and the editors of two influential weekly pub- 
184 


Son of Italy 

lications in America became interested in my 
work. Henry Seidel Canby, editor of “The Lit¬ 
erary Review” of the “New York Evening Post,” 
was one of them. Poems of mine were published. 
Other magazines followed. Soon the newspapers 
began to print my story and word about me 
appeared in Europe and throughout America. 

The literary world began to take me up as a 
great curiosity and I was literally feasted, wel¬ 
comed and stared at. Letters of congratulation 
and appreciation came from various sections of 
America: from Boston to’Frisco. But more sin¬ 
cere and dearer to my heart were the tributes of 
my fellow workers who recognized that at last 
one of them had risen from the ditches and quick¬ 
sands of toil to speak his heart to the upper 
world. 

And sweeter yet was the happiness of my 
parents who realized that after all I had not 
really gone astray, but had sought and attained 
a goal far from the deep-worn groove of peasant 
drudgery. 


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